Rarely has a fight been spoken about and debated as much before it has even happened, as the overdue meeting between Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic.
The current and former UFC heavyweight champions were set to meet at UFC 295 in what many believed would be the final fight of both men’s careers.
Jones’ injury pushed the fight back and in that time, there has been a lot of talk about whether interim champion Tom Aspinall should be next for “Bones” instead.
Despite the clear case to be made for why Aspinall should get the chance to unify the belts, Dana White and the UFC haven’t even considered the possibility of Jones vs Miocic being removed from the schedule.
White has questioned whether the fans and media expect him to tell Miocic, who is arguably the best UFC heavyweight of all time, to stand aside rather than rescheduling his long-awaited meeting with Jones.
Aljamain Sterling Theorizes Why The UFC Are Sticking To Their Guns On Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic
In a recent YouTube video, former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling gave his thoughts on this heavily debated topic.
‘Funkmaster’ took the stance that if Jones is on his way out, surely you would want him to face a young fighter like Aspinall who could become a big star if he’s able to be the first man to defeat “Bones”, rather than the potential of seeing both Jones and Miocic walk away after their fight.
Sterling then came to the conclusion that there could be another factor in play that has not been publicly announced.
He questioned whether there could be a party outside of the UFC who are keeping the Jones vs Miocic fight together because as Sterling stated, the promotion always wants to put on the biggest possible fights, which at this time, would be the heavyweight title unification clash with Aspinall.
The former champion theorized that a wealthy outside influence may be the one that is pushing for the original fight to be rebooked, rather than scrapping it in favor of a more exciting option.
“They always go with the fight that makes the most money so there has to be something there with the UFC being adamant and sticking to the guns of Jon Jones fighting Stipe Miocic. There just has to be something there. Maybe it’s contractual, maybe it’s contractual with another organization, maybe it’s one of the Sheikhs overseas or something that they promised this fight. There has to be something that’s making the UFC reluctant to unify the belts and that’s the only thing that I could think of that makes sense.”
