Long-time MMA Journalist of the Year awardee Ariel Helwani believes that UFC is making the mistake of letting the entire heavyweight division wait for Jon Jones to return. According to Helwani, the promotion should have stripped Jones of the belt and allowed Tom Aspinall to take the fight against Stipe Miocic.
Jones is currently recovering after having surgery for his pectoral muscle injury, and it was followed by a second surgery involving his elbow. While on rest, the heavyweight champ received repeated callouts from Aspinall, with the Briton even suggesting to the promotion to strip him of the belt and let him face Miocic. However, the UFC dismissed the demands, with “Bones” blasting the young fighter for his relentless callouts. Recently, the champ criticized Aspinall’s résumé to downplay the fighter’s right to challenge him.
Helwani, nonetheless, believes every aspect of Jone’s continuous reign as the heavyweight champ is wrong, stressing that the UFC has a huge part in this. For the journalist, the promotion should allow the division to continue moving with or without Jones, stressing it should let Aspinall take the lead as the current interim champ.
“If Tom Aspinall was just the undisputed champion, you could have had him defend that title against Stipe or someone like Ciryl Gane,” Helwani explained on the recent episode of The MMA Hour. “What I would do if I was them (UFC), dating back to November, I would just have taken the belt off Jon and said, “Jon, when you are ready to come back, you will get all the benefits of being a champion, you will get all the points, you will get to fight for the belt, but we have to keep this train moving along.’”
Helwani also lambasted Jones for reasoning out that Aspinall couldn’t challenge him for his title. Given his injury and his situation, the industry personality believes that the promotion should do what it always does to other bouts where it removes fighters who encountered injuries in their training. Ultimately, Helwani underscored that the title is being held hostage.
“The part that bothers me and many people about this is Jon Jones telling Tom Aspinall, ‘You haven’t earned this. You haven’t done enough. You don’t have the résumé,'” Helwani added. “If Jon says, ‘I want to fight Stipe when I’m back,’ that’s fine.
“The UFC, I think, needs to step in, for the sake of their organization, for the sake of their titles, and say, ‘Look, if you want to fight Stipe, you can do it as a non-title fight.’ … Now, what is happening is this belt is being held hostage because there was some promise about this fight. Fights fall through due to injuries all the time and never come to fruition! … How long are we gonna wait? How long is Tom Aspinall gonna wait? How long is the whole division gonna wait? No one needs a title on the line when Jon Jones fights Stipe.”
