Jon Jones is starting to have some regrets about the way he handled his MMA career in 2025.
The long-winded heavyweight saga between champions Jones and Tom Aspinall came to a thudding halt this past summer, when UFC CEO Dana White announced that Jones was done with a throwaway comment at a post-fight press conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. One of the greatest combat sports athletes of all time — retired just like that. Not after a win, not after a fight, but during a quiet and unrelated Fight Night scrum half a world away that Jones was unsurprisingly absent from.
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It all came to a head after Jones reportedly turned down a rarely-seen — at least in the UFC — $30 million fight offer he’d requested to meet Aspinall, according to Uncrowned’s Ariel Helwani. The fight and terms were agreed to — then Jones spurned them anyway.
Reflecting on the situation in an appearance this week on the “No Script” podcast, Jones expressed some regret. Simultaneously, the 38-year-old former two-division champion continued to make his pleas for White to potentially grant him a fight against current UFC light heavyweight kingpin, Alex Pereira, for a heavyweight bout on the promotion’s upcoming White House event this coming June.
Said Jones:
“I think my most immediate goal is to try to be on the White House card. I’m giving Dana his space. Dana has changed my life. He has changed my life. He’s changed my children’s lives. And I’m forever grateful to him. And we had a verbal agreement that didn’t go over well. Nothing was finalized. But, I do admit guilt — not guilt, but I was wrong. The way things went down, I was wrong. And I wish I could see him face-to-face and just apologize to him, so that we can let bygones be bygones and get back to making some major money for the sport and really entertaining these fans.
“When he’s feeling me, I think I’m one of his favorite fighters. When he’s not feeling me, I’m probably the reason why he has a bald head.”
An easy fix for Jones’ regret would seemingly be welcoming the fight with Aspinall. However, that still seems to be a moot matchup in the eyes of “Bones,” especially after Aspinall’s latest fight.
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Aspinall returned to action in late October at UFC 321 for his first defense of the undisputed UFC heavyweight title. Unfortunately, his bout against Ciryl Gane ended early in the first round after a double eye-poke from Gane rendered Aspinall unable to continue, resulting in a controversial no-contest. Aspinall has since been recovering from his injuries.
Having watched the fight, Jones was far from impressed with his would-be British rival:
“Tom’s a great athlete, but I do feel like he’s a one-trick pony. I believe that his wrestling and jiu-jitsu is incredibly overrated. He has a beautiful one-two. I got to learn a lot about his patterns in his last fight — beautiful one-two. That’s really about it. That’s the one thing that he’s setting up real nice. He couldn’t touch Ciryl Gane at all. I feel like Gane was just getting warmed up. Gane’s hands were down, his was shaking his shoulders, bouncing around, he was touching him. He was so comfortable.
“When Tom gets hurt, he’s like immediately incapacitated. Immediately. It’s like you poke my eye and then he’s immediately [holding it]. There was no [trying to blink it out]. Dude, I would’ve been the silliest looking cat on national TV just [blinking frantically] trying [to continue].
“He did the same thing with Curtis Blaydes when he hurt his knee — there was no limping, there was no trying to get up. He was just immediately, ‘Burn my village, I can’t go on!’ He immediately quits. When he got tapped out with an ankle lock [in his first loss in 2015], there was no trying to fight his hands. He immediately quit. Immediately.”
Aspinall infamously tore his ACL off a leg kick just 15 seconds into his July 2022 fight with Curtis Blaydes. The pair rematched in July 2024, with Aspinall easily defending his interim belt by 60-second knockout.
A rematch between Aspinall and Gane is expected to take place sometime in early 2026.
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Jones last fought when he defeated Stipe Miocic via third-round stoppage at UFC 309 in November 2024.
