Tom Aspinall appears to have moved on from waiting for a fight with Jon Jones. While the fixture is one both fans and professionals of the sport are eager to witness, Jones has barely shown interest in facing Aspinall. And now, it seems Aspinall also doesn’t care about fighting the heavyweight champion. 

A few weeks ago, Jones took to his social media page to hint at possibly retiring. Although his last fight was only seven months ago and it’s too soon to conclude whether he’s out of the game for good, Jones himself said his time may be done. 

This is why Aspinall has now declared himself the king of the heavyweight division, bidding a happy retirement to Jones. Aspinall spoke his mind while with Daniel Cormier on his podcast.  

He said: “Jon’s retired. What are you talking about? You guys don’t follow Jon on social media? The guy is living his best life. He’s had a fantastic career, we all know. We know Jon’s a religious man, so I want to say God bless him moving forward, what he does in his life and his career, and we move on. We move on. I’m the undisputed heavyweight champion.”

The interim heavyweight champion said that his focus now was on making things exciting again in the division as he had no plans to retire soon; “I ain’t thinking about retiring. I’m thinking about getting this division active, making the heavyweight division great again, getting these big fights in, fighting these contenders who are sat on the sidelines waiting for over a year at this point. I’m here to fight, man.”

Aspinall’s decision to move on from waiting for Jones can be viewed as a positive development. While the prospect of facing Jones offers him the chance to become the champion, it also ties down his opportunity to face other top ranked players and he said it best: “I’m not waiting for one fight. I’m not trying to fight one guy. I’m trying to fight all the guys. I’m trying to be the guy at heavyweight who takes out everybody”.