Tom Aspinoll never cared about his fight with John Jones. He just wanted what was coming to him.
In the end, Aspinall did exactly what he said he would do a year ago. Jones retires without fighting him. “Bones” left the sport in June and ended its 17 years of running with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
As a result, Aspinall was promoted from interim to the indisputable champion. That certainly isn’t the way he wanted to win the belt, but Britt makes it clear that the man standing in front of him never matters. He wanted an opportunity to prove himself as the best heavyweight on the planet.
“I wasn’t actually chasing John,” Aspinel said in an interview with the UFC. “I was chasing the heavyweight title the whole time. The opponent – the guy standing across from me – wasn’t important. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t important. What mattered to me was the best in the world.”
After wasting most of the year waiting for John Jones to sign on the dotted line, Aspinel is back in business and ready to become something the UFC hasn’t seen in a long time – an active heavyweight champion.
Aspinall has yet to book his first official defense as an indisputable champion, but now all the signs point to the much-anticipated clash with former interim title holder Ciryl Gane. Of course, that hasn’t stopped other candidates like Milton Almeida from throwing his name on the hat.