UFC 304 is distinguishable from your average, run-of-the-mill pay-per-view for several reasons. One is that the fights occur in the wee hours of the night in Manchester, England, so that the UFC can cater to the American audience. That is obviously less than ideal for the fighters competing on the card (many British), but cool for us out here in the States, who don’t like to disrupt our bedtimes.
The other thing?
It’s that England’s own Tom Aspinall will defend the interim heavyweight title in the co-main event against Curtis Blaydes. That part is highly unusual. Only two fighters in UFC history have defended “interim” titles—Andrei Arlovski nearly 20 years ago at UFC 53, and Renan Barão almost a decade later. The word “interim” is the fight game’s way of saying “placeholder,” a sterile way of saying “fully accessorized no. 1 contender,” which is, of course, a designation for “a warm body masquerading with a belt while the actual lineal champion comes back from their preoccupation.”
You know—like a contender holding a promise ring.
Right now, Aspinall is that guy. He won the interim title by stepping in for the injured heavyweight champ Jon Jones last November at UFC 295 and hoped that his victory over Sergei Pavlovich would elevate him to a unifying title fight with Jones. Why wouldn’t he hope for that? Traditionally, that’s how it works. Yet eight months later, Aspinall is forced to defend the asterisk title because the UFC still wants Jones—who is recovering from a torn pectoral muscle—to defend the actual title this fall against his original UFC 295 opponent, Stipe Miocic, who turns 42 in August.
Even with Dana White’s assurances at the UFC 304 press conference that the winner of the Aspinall-Blaydes fight will take on the winner of Jones-Miocic, Jones hasn’t exactly been on board with the idea of unifying the titles. Besides, that fight is four months away, and there always seems to be a little extra red tape with Jones.
Jones is currently dealing with some legal issues (again), this time two misdemeanor charges stemming from an incident with a drug-testing
agent who visited him in Albuquerque in March. He could face up to a year in jail if convicted. If you scroll down to the “Controversies” and “Failed Drug Tests” sections on his Wikipedia page, you’ll find exactly 2,889 words of literature. It’s an extensive list of hit-and-runs, domestic incidents, illegal substances, and DUIs.
If you’re Tom Aspinall heading into UFC 304, Jones’s heavyweight title feels like an exclusive supper club—because it’s next to impossible to get reservations. So what is at stake for him if he avenges his only UFC loss by beating Blaydes in the small hours of Sunday morning? He’d have to become the front-runner for that unifying title fight with Jones, right? Even if Jones (a) has no genuine interest in fighting him, and (b) has that cooling campfire of a fight with Miocic still out on the horizon?
You’d like to think so.
Even with those outside variables, one thing is certain: The outcry for that Aspinall-Jones heavyweight unification bout would reach an all-time high if Aspinall wins, while the November Miocic-Jones fight would become even more absurd if it stays intact. Miocic—who doesn’t have a victory against any active UFC heavyweight—doesn’t even land in the top three fights we’d most like to see for Jones as we head into UFC 304.
Jones has fought just once in the last four years—for the vacant heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane at UFC 285—and the scenes have changed drastically around him, especially with the emergence of Alex Pereira as a superstar.
As the specter of Jon Jones hovers over Aspinall and UFC 304, we thought about all the fights people would most want to see Jones in and ranked them on a 10-point “Jonesing scale.”
Tom Aspinall
At this point, Aspinall’s interim belt has become more of a symbol of frustration than anything else, mainly because he’s come to represent so much for the sport of MMA—not only as England’s biggest star, but as the very evolution of the heavyweight division. In eight total UFC fights, only once has Aspinall seen the second round, which came against Arlovski in 2021 (in which he won by submission). His only loss to date? That was when he blew out his knee in the first 15 seconds of his first fight with Blaydes. He’s finished an opponent in the first round six times.
Those credentials speak for themselves, and it all adds up to a massive fight with Jones, who has never truly lost a fight in the UFC in 16 years. People can point to Jones’s super-close bout with Dominick Reyes in 2020, but that’s the only valid argument against his running GOAT status. The L he took against Matt Hamill in 2009 was due to a disqualification for throwing 12-to-6 elbows, and the UFC changed that rule this past week. Now, that fight would be ruled a “no contest.”
If Aspinall defends his home soil in England and beats Blaydes, the biggest fight the UFC can make is the most natural fight there is: a unification bout between the baddest heavyweights in the world. It will be exciting to see what Aspinall says on the microphone after the fight, and it will be just as interesting to see how both the UFC and Jones respond.
Jonesing scale: 10 out of 10.
Alex Pereira
To put things in perspective, Jones has had just one fight since February 2020. Meanwhile, Alex Pereira? He has fought 10 times since then, including once in LFA and nine times in the UFC. He has worked his way to the middleweight title, which he beat Israel Adesanya to obtain (before losing it back to Adesanya in April 2023). He moved up to light heavyweight, won the vacant title, and has defended it twice.
Overall, Poatan has defeated five current or former champions and has logged six knockouts in that time. The idea of a Jones-Pereira fight is enough to boggle the mind. Joe Rogan endorses this fight above all others, and for good reason. Pereira would be making the jump to heavyweight to win an unprecedented (and truly historic) third title, while Jones would be confronting the UFC’s new bogeyman. This kind of PPV event would sell well over a million buys while captivating the combat world like Conor McGregor did in his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov.
As for the style matchup? The power both have? The fighting IQs? This fight would have it all. It helps, too, that Dana White has insisted in defiance of Pereira’s torrid run as a champion that Jones remains the pound-for-pound king. That sets up a colossal moment of truth.
Perhaps there is optimism that the fight could happen, as Jones himself has teased a future fight with Pereira, calling it “the biggest fight in UFC history” on social media. Should Aspinall beat Blaydes, it might be a tough look for the UFC to sneak Pereira into a title shot with Jones, but here’s guessing you’d hear very few complaints outside of England.
Jonesing scale: 10 out of 10
Francis Ngannou
Not so long ago, there was a time when a Jones-Ngannou fight was the biggest conceivable matchup the UFC could put together. There was plenty of back-and-forth between the two when Ngannou was still the UFC’s heavyweight champion, and with Jones moving up to heavyweight at the time, it felt like MMA’s equivalent to Ali-Frazier.
Like so many hypotheticals in matchmaking, it was destined to live in the imagination. It never came to pass because Ngannou bet on himself by signing with the PFL and segued into the boxing ring, where he made millions in bouts with Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
The likelihood of Ngannou and Jones fighting is very small, though the appetite for that fight is still strong. Ngannou was hailed as the baddest man in the world while wearing the UFC belt, and little has changed just because he lost in the boxing ring to Joshua. It would take an unforeseen act of divine intervention to happen at this point unless … well, unless the deep-pocketed dream casters in Saudi Arabia can somehow work out a crossover deal to make that fight with a few freighters full of cash.
Jonesing scale: 8 out of 10
Stipe Miocic
We’ll include the Miocic fight as the fourth most coveted for Jones, not just because it is inevitable, but because Miocic is arguably the greatest UFC heavyweight of all time. He has held the title twice and still holds the record for consecutive title defenses in the weight class (three). There is some magic to imagining Jones and Miocic finally facing each other, given Miocic’s power and Jones’s pterodactyl-like reach.
The fight doesn’t come in higher because Stipe feels like an artifact to a different era, as he hasn’t fought in three and a half years. And what are the stakes for each competitor? If Stipe wins, does he ride off into the sunset as a three-time heavyweight champ, having defeated his toughest opponent? And if Jones wins, does he do the same thing? Or does he commit to fighting Aspinall? Or Pereira?
Rarely do fights of this magnitude hold that kind of uncertainty heading in. UFC president Dana White has defended the choice to keep this fight intact for the last year, so if somebody pulls a Georges St-Pierre and decides to retire after the fight and ultimately vacate the title, there’s nobody to blame but themselves.
Jonesing scale: 6 out of 10
Wild Card: Curtis Blaydes
The one unwanted threat in the Jon Jones sweepstakes would be if Blaydes enters Manchester and upsets Aspinall. That would change everything, at least in the short term. For starters, Blaydes would then hold the interim title, which would (presumably) give him the inside track to Jones.
Would the public pine for a Jones-Blaydes fight? Probably not. That pairing would be something of a buzzkill compared to all the other scenarios.
If there is a silver lining to Blaydes winning at UFC 304, it’s that the original plan of having Jones fight Miocic in November will suddenly look like the best option. The UFC would avoid enhanced scrutiny over keeping the fight intact, perhaps even coming off as insightful to grandfather the legacy angles over all the noise.
Not that people couldn’t work themselves up to a Blaydes-Jones unification bout over time, as that fight could be left as a dangling carrot beyond the fall date at Madison Square Garden, but nobody would be losing their minds over it.
Jonesing scale: 3 out of 10
Chuck Mindenhall writes about combat sports without bias, and sometimes about his Denver teams with extreme bias. He cohosts The Ringer MMA Show on Spotify.