Last year, I wrote an essay examining segments from the career of the now-retired former UFC champion, Jon “Bones” Jones, concluding that he was the greatest fighter in the history of the promotion¹. This year, I’m reconsidering that conclusion; I stand by my work, but Jones’ actions surrounding his retirement have undoubtedly soured what was a controversially legendary career. I wrote that whoever his retirement fight ended up being against would be irrelevant to how people remember him in the annals of MMA history, but that was under the assumption Jones would take the logical course of action and immediately retire following his next fight instead of continuing to logjam the heavyweight division.

Admittedly, I gave Jones the benefit of the doubt last year; he was five months into recovering from a pectoral tendon tear while training for the Stipe Miocic fight and had put his stock fully into that fight as his retirement bout when I published my essay. Jones spent the last half of his career serving suspensions and sitting on the sidelines; he’s the last person who deserves to handpick how his career comes to an end, but the fight game is a dirty business, and sometimes that’s just how it works. However, once Tom Aspinall became interim heavyweight champion by knocking out Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 295, the card originally supposed to feature the Jones-Miocic fight, a potential fight between Aspinall and Jones largely overshadowed any hype the original matchup had.

Still, Aspinall had only returned from his July 2022 knee injury sustained during his first fight with Curtis Blaydes, just four months after Jones beat Ciryl Gane for the vacant heavyweight championship. Aspinall’s five-fight win streak in the UFC came with three consecutive Performance of the Night bonuses, all first-round finishes, against Andrei Arlovski, Sergei Spivach, and Alexander Volkov, no less; destroying Marcin Tybura in his return fight made him more than deserving of being interim champion once he beat Pavlovich. While it would have made more sense to schedule Aspinall-Jones at this point, I understood why Jones and the UFC kept the Miocic fight on the table, and again, had Jones retired immediately following his inevitable win against Miocic, Jones’ narrative as the UFC’s greatest fighter ever would be cemented amongst the eye rolls and groans of diehard fans, but widely accepted en masse. The only way he could’ve further cemented himself is by taking the Aspinall fight, and that’s why I’ve been reconsidering my initial opinion on the matter. In sports, all sports, not just combat sports, you go out on your sword to pass the torch to the next generation if you manage to stick around long enough. What Jones did in the 15 months up to his retirement since I published my original essay is not only antithetical to the concept of competition, but it’s disgraceful enough to gather pause from any fan or outside viewer regarding his overall legacy; after all, how many films have people enjoyed only to state the ending sucked enough to not recommend to their immediate circle?

Rather than retire after getting what he wanted or go out like a true champion, win or lose, and agree to the Aspinall fight, Jones instead floated the idea of fighting Alex Pereira² and went on a social media crusade putting down Aspinall as a contender, something he had already begun doing earlier in and throughout the year³ under the guise that he was “focused on Stipe,” and allegedly demanded an absurd amount of money to fight Aspinall only for the UFC to meet those demands just for Jones to still not agree to the fight⁴. After this year-and-a-half impasse, we finally, and rather abruptly, got a conclusion to this saga; Jones allegedly called Dana White on the night of June 20th, 2025, and personally announced his retirement, with White relaying this information the following day at the UFC on ABC: Hill vs. Rountree Jr. post-fight press conferences⁵. Again, I gave him the benefit of the doubt last year, but with all that’s occurred since then, it’s undeniable that Jones indeed ducked Aspinall. I don’t intend to backtrack everything I wrote in that original essay, as events and context often shift and change at the whims of the people involved in real-time; however, the safe position Jones cultivated and held as the greatest fighter in the history of the UFC, even by his peers⁶, was not something I imagined he would derail through inaction. He already had to live with failed drug tests on his resume, but now that the fact he ducked Aspinall is etched on there as well, if I can repurpose a section of my initial essay, didn’t I say this guy was the greatest UFC fighter of all time?

To many people, he can’t be, and that’s fine; truthfully, it’s for the betterment of the sport that some fans hold him to such a high standard. Performance-enhancing drugs and the athletes that use them are most likely viewed negatively by fans of every single sport on the planet; it is cheating, after all. As someone who is a fan of sports and competition, I, too, should be vehemently against athletes using performance-enhancing drugs; yet, I don’t think Barry Bonds isn’t the greatest baseball player of all time because he used steroids, but because his overall playoff numbers and results, frankly, suck. It’s fair practice to attach an asterisk to the resumes of athletes who spend even a portion of their career taking steroids, but as in the case of Barry Bonds, you still have to win the whole thing to be a champion. Many athletes have spent their careers juicing and recording impressive stats, and some take drugs to keep up with the field. If that statement weren’t true, there wouldn’t be only one cyclist in the top 21 from the seven consecutive years Lance Armstrong dominated the Tour de France, not implicated in a doping scandal⁷. The reality is, winning championships ultimately requires a level of skill and fortitude that even the most high-profile athletes can’t muster.

I understand that most fans will claim that’s weak reasoning to justify his status, and in a world of black-and-white morality, it would hold weight. Unfortunately, as many jaded sports fans and I have discovered over the years, people, by and large, really only care about results. I am also guilty of this, as when I find people levying an athlete’s perceived shortcomings in their personal life against their professional career, I’ve always found myself in long-time disagreement with this approach, as, well, results are results, and who truly cares if the best in the world at their particular field was well-liked? Jones doesn’t have to be a model citizen to be the greatest fighter of all time; if failed drug tests were a hindrance to that, he wouldn’t hold the respect of the majority of the roster, even as he went on a seven-month sabbatical after beating Miocic and preventing Aspinall from laying claim to the undisputed UFC Heavyweight Championship. Your resume is one thing, but the championship is supposed to represent the best that division has to offer currently; if a 37-year-old Jones felt as if he had nothing left to prove following his win over Miocic, then retirement was the only option.

Jones was once a 23-year-old contender who accepted a fight against Maurício “Shogun” Rua, who was almost six years his elder, for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship on short notice, but couldn’t return the favor for Aspinall, who is nearly six years younger than Jones. Instead, he held onto the belt for seven more months, teased multiple fights, and then abruptly retired after months of people prodding him to fight Aspinall; that’s not behavior associated with the greatest fighter of all time. It doesn’t help that Jones openly acknowledged Aspinall had the physical traits to seriously challenge him, especially now that he’s older⁸, which forces one to question his reasoning for not taking the fight is due to the fact he wanted to take “fun, big money” fights against fighters with legacy, since the fact that a bout with Aspinall was the big money fight to make. In my original essay, I stated that I struggled to think of a fighter capable of besting a prime “Bones” Jones; I did concede he was not in his prime during this period, but his actions surrounding this potential career-defining fight have now given me a prospect for that thought: Tom Aspinall.

I will retire Jon Jones without even fighting him
– Tom Aspinall, 2024

That’s a real quote uttered from Aspinall on Michael Bisping’s podcast last year⁹, and it’s not something you want lingering as a talking point while you face the final stretch of your career. Jones stated multiple times that Aspinall did not have the championships or resume necessary to excite him to accept the challenges, something Aspinall himself agreed with when comparing their careers, but much like I stated earlier, Aspinall always stated the championship is for “right now,” and he was always willing to meet Jones in the octagon; Jones was flat out not willing to meet him. Again, Aspinall was the interim champion and even defended that title one more time in July 2024 against Blaydes, avenging his loss by knocking him out one minute into their rematch; there was no other fight to make for Jones, whether he wanted that or not, and by not immediately announcing his retirement following the Miocic fight, he, and Dana White, both must accept the less-than-stellar viewpoint fans may forever have of them following this entire incident. His failed drug tests, while seemingly being a massive stain on his legacy on the immediate face of the situation, can potentially be hand-waved if you wash away naivety to the larger world at work, but ducking a legitimate challenger when the people are practically bloodlusting for it, that’s something I don’t have an answer for. This entire situation is representative of how boxing has returned to booking fights people want to see, something Dana White prided himself on for decades, while the UFC has been delivering less-than-stellar cards this year.

You don’t have to search for long to find MMA YouTubers discussing the current state¹⁰ of the promotion¹¹ and lamenting the fact that boxing¹² has been delivering better events lately. Recurring readers should be able to tell I’m a fan of both boxing and MMA, as my most popular essay, by far, was the one¹³ discussing boxing’s abundant weight classes; still, at the tail end of that essay, I did write, “Is it any wonder why the UFC continuously gains fans while boxing stagnates?” Only for Dana White to hold up an entire division for the sake of one fighter’s ego and deliver underwhelming cards in the eyes of fans for consecutive months. It’s better for combat sports that boxing is again creating marketable stars; unfortunately, it’s happening while the UFC and its uninteresting social media presence coast on the reputation it built up in the 2000s as the promotion where exciting fights took place. In 2007, Joe Rogan went on ESPN and debated boxing promoter Lou DiBella; amidst the clashing words was Rogan’s statement that boxing was “getting swallowed by a greater, more efficient, more spectacular sport,” and now Dana White actively promotes boxing events at UFC event press conferences¹⁴.

It’s fitting then that the man who carefully built his legacy as “the unbeatable final boss” of the promotion shamefully bowed out amid this tumultuous period; do I still think he’s the greatest of all time? It’s easy to look at his record and pick it apart, something fans have been doing since his retirement, but that’s a cheap tactic to discredit a legendary body of work because of an emotional response to someone that people don’t like; sure, maybe Jones did always have the physical advantages and not everyone Jones fought was at their absolute peak when he fought them, but during his reign, he was dominant against what was considered top-level competition at the time and no revisionist history now can change that fact. If you’ve watched any amount of combat sports, you know politics is a part of the game; it’s unfortunate, but it’s why people revere the champions who fully embody the “anyone, anywhere, any time” mentality, and it’s why even though I still personally hold Jones up as the greatest fighter in the history of the UFC, it can no longer be the undisputed, mainstream accepted narrative anymore.

Rather than stand alone atop the mountain, as he was well on his way to doing, Jones knocked himself off the peak to a level where it’s once again more of a “Mount Rushmore” debate of who is the best the sport has to offer. Dana White must also have realized this, as he shot down the idea of Jones headlining a potential UFC event at the White House¹⁵, something White and US President Donald Trump have been teasing in recent months¹⁶. So, congratulations, Jones; your final effort in proving yourself as the man who couldn’t lose ultimately lost you your reputation as the undisputed greatest of all time; was it worth it?

Editor’s Notes

1. Havarti – 3/16/2024 – Skull and “Bones” Jones
2. YouTube/Full Send MMA – 11/17/2024 – JON JONES ADMITS HE ONLY WANTS TO FIGHT ALEX PEREIRA AND WILL RELEASE UFC TITLE TO TOM ASPINALL
3. YouTube/The MMA Guru – 8/29/2024 – Jon Jones Has A MELTDOWN About Tom Aspinall? He Is Starting To LOSE HIS MIND? My Reaction
4. The Times of India – 6/10/2025 – “He went back on his word!” – Ariel Helwani on Dana White’s statement indicating a silent exit by Jon Jones from heavyweight title unification bout
5. YouTube/UFC – 6/21/2025 – Dana White Announces the Retirement of Jon Jones From the UFC 🚨
6. Bloody Elbow – 6/27/2025 – Jon Jones reacts to Khabib Nurmagomedov calling him the GOAT in response to polarizing retirement
7. BBC – 10/12/2012 – Lance Armstrong titles ‘should be void’ says Tour de France director
8. The Mac Life – 12/14/2024 – Watch: ‘I don’t want to do business with him’ — Jon Jones explains Aspinall stance
9. YouTube/Michael Bisping – 8/20/2024 – BISPING interviews TOM ASPINALL! “I’ll RETIRE Jon Jones WITHOUT Fighting Him!”
10. YouTube/ITP MMA Live – 6/3/2025 – 2025 Has Been Terrible for UFC Fans So Far
11. YouTube/Patrick Cc: – 7/7/2025 – Why The UFC Sucks Now
12. YouTube/The MMA Guru – 5/2/2025 – Time To Fire Dana White For Betrayal? THE UFC IS LOSING TO BOXING! We Have ZERO Promotion!
13. Havarti – 12/4/2021 – The Curious Case of Boxing’s Weight Classes
14. YouTube/MMA Crazy – 6/9/2025 – Dana White confirms he will be promoting Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford with TKO Boxing
15. Yahoo! Sports – 7/20/2025 – Dana White ‘can’t risk’ Jon Jones being involved in UFC’s potential White House event
16. MMA Fighting – 6/11/2025 – Dana White reveals new details for UFC White House event, promises ‘the baddest card of all time’