Dominick Cruz has a strong feeling about how a fight between Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall would go.
Though the ship may have sailed on the heavyweight rivals ever facing off, Jones vs. Aspinall remains a source of intrigue with Jones potentially returning from a brief retirement in 2026 and Aspinall currently holding the UFC heavyweight title. During Jones’ run with the belt, a bout with Aspinall—an interim champion—never materialized, with Jones repeatedly stating he had no interest in a unification bout against Aspinall.
Instead, Jones announced a retirement and Aspinall went on to defend against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321. The bout ended in disaster for both fighters, with Aspinall unable to continue following a Gane eye poke near the end of the first round. Still, Cruz saw enough in the short contest to question how Aspinall would fare against Jones.
“I’ll be honest, when I watched the film of Gane vs. Jon Jones, I thought Tom Aspinall would just throw a couple of strikes, power double, and take [Gane] down,” Cruz said on his Love & War podcast. “But right here you see the takedown defense from Gane. Not only did it improve, but I think we also see that Tom Aspinall might no be as high-level of a wrestler as we might have thought. He just faced guys that couldn’t really wrestle.
“I think Jon Jones would agree with me on that. He’s one of the better wrestlers in the world in mixed martial arts, I would say, and I do believe after watching this fight of Aspinall and Gane that Jon Jones will out-wrestle Aspinall for sure, no doubt in my mind. He’s a nasty [junior college] wrestler and then you add the striking, the length, and the range, and Jon Jones just has nasty Greco. So the mixture of how he can use his range, his length, get to underhooks and stop Tom Aspinall from throwing his combinations, I think it would be a real problem.”
Jones is widely regarded as one of the greatest fighters of all time and his elite wrestling has contributed to much of his success. Several of Jones’ notable wins have come by putting his opponents on their backs and bludgeoning them with ground-and-pound or forcing a submission, including his UFC 285 domination of Gane that earned Jones a vacant heavyweight title.
A rematch seemed like a long shot for Gane, but had he taken Aspinall’s belt and if Jones were interested in reclaiming it, a second encounter have been in the cards as unlikely as that sounds.
“Feel bad for Gane, too, because he did look ready and he was looking good and he might have gotten another chance at Jon Jones the way he was looking if he could have won that,” Cruz said. “I don’t blame the gloves and I don’t blame anything, I just blame it being a chance of fighting. This is what happens in mixed martial arts. I don’t think anybody’s wrong or right about it. I don’t think there’s much you can do about it. I think just eye pokes happen, groin shots happen.”
One angle Cruz won’t engage with is the suggestion that Aspinall could have continued after being poked in the eyes, but chose to quit.
“That was disappointing,” Cruz said. “Tom Aspinall, hope you get well, they’re saying now he might need surgery on his eyes. That’s the rumor, don’t know if it’s true. But for anybody out there saying that he just wanted out, I’m sorry, you’re just silly. You’re grabbing at nothing. This guy’s as tough as they come. All of us are as tough as they come.”
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