Where does Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall rank among MMA's best fights that never happened?

Yahoo

4 hours ago

Jon Jones' time in MMA has officially come to an end, as we first learned at Saturday night's UFC Baku post-fight press conference. With Jones already facing a potential new round of legal trouble, it's almost too "perfectly MMA" of an exit for one of the sport's all-time greatest — the same man White himself propped up as the unequivocal greatest combat athlete ever. Regardless of how you feel about him or this final chapter of his career, Jones' legacy is set in stone, and he very much is one of, if not the best, the sport has ever seen. That's despite all the question marks and controversies throughout the years.
But that's not the real question we should be asking in the wake of this quite frankly monumental announcement.
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Jones' retirement leaves a sour taste in the community's collective mouthes for numerous reasons, though what sours it most is that we're forever left wondering what would've happened if Jones and new undisputed heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall had actually fought. Whether you were confident in either direction, the massive attraction that the matchup would've been isn't happening — and that flat-out sucks, especially if you like watching two incredibly talented larger gentlemen exchange fisticuffs.
Unfortunately for longtime MMA fans, this isn't the first hotly-anticipated bout to fall by the wayside. Hell, it isn't even Jones' first in this category.
So where exactly does the now-hypothetical Jones vs. Aspinall bout rank amongst all the previous highest-level violence pairings that had the world salivating until they didn't happen?
GOATs and superfights eventually become synonymous with each other. Just ask Georges St-Pierre.
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
The superfights
To first understand some of these fights that never happened, we have to make some specifications. In MMA, there have only been a small number of true superfights, which started with Georges St-Pierre and BJ Penn's champion vs. champion rematch in 2009. When it comes to the nitty-gritty, a superfight must be a clash of two reigning champions, at the very least. However you want to further define it, based on those champions' statuses, is where things get debatable. But for the sake of this discussion, that's where we'll lay the foundation.
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To make matters simpler, think of a fight that, at its highest imaginable quality, perfectly encapsulates "the unstoppable force vs. the immovable object" cliche.
Anderson Silva vs. Georges St-Pierre
Speaking of St-Pierre, his would-be clash against Anderson Silva might be the most-debated MMA fight that never happened. It is for me, anyway. We're talking about the greatest welterweight and the greatest middleweight of all time. If you lived through their historic reigns of nine and 10 consecutive title defenses, respectively, you thought these guys actually were incapable of losing. It made the idea of them fighting so much more thrilling.
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Seeing St-Pierre eventually capture middleweight gold after Silva was out of the picture was a bitter pill to swallow. "Rush" could fit into the weight class just fine, which was always the question mark or concern. But not only that, he arguably performed better than he had before leaving four years prior.
Stylistically, Silva vs. St-Pierre had literally everything you could ask for too.
The UFC record books are absolutely loaded with each of these guys' names, and merely calling Silva vs. St-Pierre a "superfight" still doesn't quite do it justice.
Imagine if Francis Ngannou won the UFC heavyweight title in front of a crowd.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Francis Ngannou vs. Jon Jones
As a light heavyweight champion leaving the division to finally give fans what they wanted, Jones' heavyweight debut against a recently-crowned Francis Ngannou would have been perfect.
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In a performance so easily forgotten in hindsight, Ngannou's coronation in his 2021 rematch against Stipe Miocic was ungodly. On that night, the Cameroonian knockout artist who showed up appeared to be the most horrifically unbeatable fighter ever seen. So much so that it delivered the world that now-infamous quote from White, who loudly proclaimed that he wouldn't want to fight Ngannou either if he were Jones.
Contrast all of that with Jones, who had been unbeatable at light heavyweight. (Outside of him setting himself back multiple times.) He was always the biggest and best guy at his weight. There simply wasn't a challenge that's ever been bigger for Jones than the freshly-minted UFC champ Ngannou.
Jose Aldo vs. Dominick Cruz
Go back to Silva vs. St-Pierre and apply it here as the featherweight and bantamweight versions.
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Jose Aldo vs. Dominick Cruz never quite had as much "need" or hype behind it as a lot of these fights, but it was undeniably as fantastical as it gets in the sport. Obviously it would've been best to see when each was at the heights of their respective UFC title reigns, solidifying their places in the history books. But even when it made the most sense at the ends of their careers, we missed it.
Aldo vs. Cruz arguably had the most opportunities and time to make it of any superfight on this list. Especially considering Aldo eventually moved to bantamweight. There was no reason for this one not to happen ... besides both being too stubborn to think the other would progress them toward a title shot in their twilights.
Featherweright champs just love Islam Makhachev, don't they?
(USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
Islam Makhachev vs. Ilia Topuria
This one is the most recent of the bunch, and still has a potential to happen in a very bizarre and roundabout way.
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Islam Makhachev is arguably the greatest lightweight of all time, opposite Ilia Topuria, who had the potential to be the greatest featherweight of all time. Instead, Topuria vacated the crown in pursuit of lightweight gold — before Makhachev did the same thing with his belt to go after welterweight gold.
In other words, each champion had the same idea, which still led to some compelling outcomes, yet the best outcome of the bunch was the one we didn't get. The magnitude of Makhachev vs. Topuria may not have been appreciated until years later, after the dust on each other's careers settled. In the Octagon, though, this was the best skill-for-skill fight that could have been made in 2025.
No fight will ever be as cursed as Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Tony Ferguson.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
The must-see fantasy fights
Sometimes, the biggest fights that could've happened in MMA were fights between two fighters within the same division. You knew what you'd get when it came to size, narrowing down the intrigue of the stylistic matchup to its purest form. And in some cases, that helped the hope of delivering the biggest box-office draw.
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Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brock Lesnar
Before we talk about Fedor Emelianenko (twice), I just have to share my belief that he would have wiped the floor with Brock Lesnar and the other name he was long linked to. Still, that didn't mean the MMA world didn't badly want to see both bouts.
When it came to Lesnar, he was the new shiny crossover star from the WWE that MMA fans couldn't quite believe was hanging onto the title for as long as he was — and how he was. By default, you could say Lesnar was the best heavyweight in the UFC, but anyone with a brain knew he wasn't the best heavyweight in the world. That was Emelianenko.
Not only that, Emelianenko was the best fighter, period — or at least he was at the time this matchup really began to pick up traction. Nothing would have been more of an oddly legitimate spectacle than Emelianenko making his UFC debut to challenge Lesnar for the title.
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Just typing that out feels so damn weird. But it was a possibility, and the UFC wanted it.
They don't make win streaks like Fedor Emelianenko's every day.
(Jon P. Kopaloff via Getty Images)
Fedor Emelianenko vs. Randy Couture
Talks of Emelianenko versus former two-division UFC champion Randy Couture also stirred around the time "The Last Emperor" was floating through the MMA ether in the post-PRIDE FC era.
The Couture fight appeared to have more legs than the Lesnar showdown, pushing the two as closely together as to get their infamous staredown photoshoot. Couture wanted it badly enough to even get the courts involved as he battled against UFC in an effort to be freed from his contract.
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Intrigue around the potential fight might not have been as widespread as it was for the Lesnar matchup, but the legacies of each man can't be denied. It would've been "Mr. UFC vs. Mr. PRIDE."
Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Tony Ferguson
The trauma induced from covering Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Tony Ferguson over the years was so intense that I actually forgot about it when initially putting this together.
These men were scheduled to fight on five different occasions, folks.
Hopefully, we never see anything like that again.
At its height, there was no greater rivalry or fantasy fight within a single division than Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson. The delays only helped boost the hype, extending and testing each fighter's resolve as they tried to maintain their ranks in unrelated matchups. It was almost like there were two uncrowned champions at lightweight. Before Charles Oliveira fought Makhachev, Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson was the fight to have two divisional streaks of 10-plus wins collide. It just wasn't meant to be.
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Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson was the master of dominance vs. the master of violence. Two unbelievably polarizing personalities in wildly different ways. Hindsight did a wicked number on the fight's potential, but when that saga was unfolding, the entire MMA world wanted nothing more.
Thanks for nothing, Jon.
(USA TODAY Sports / Reuters)
So after all those legendary fantasy fights, where are we left now with Jones and Aspinall? Technically, it would have been champion vs. champion, but also in the same division.
Final verdict: Somewhere in between
Jones vs. Aspinall would've been as perfect of a test for either man at this stage in their careers as we could've asked for. First and foremost, at heavyweight in the UFC, it's these two, and then everyone else. But regarding the actual physical challenges they present one another with, it's exactly what great title tilts are made of — and somewhat of a rarity in this era. A reigning all-time great on one side, who happens to still be in a new-ish division and has yet to prove himself — and an ultra-talent on the other side, who's widely considered the division's present and future and is finishing everyone in record speeds.
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The magnitude of Jones vs. Aspinall grew and grew until it couldn't grow anymore.
MMA is a "what have you done for me lately" sport — and there was a whole lot of nothing that happened here. At least with Ngannou vs. Jones, we ripped that band-aid off relatively quickly.
Silva vs. St-Pierre still checks off every single box better than the rest, and the lust for Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson was always unshakeable. Yet while those fights are remembered for how awesome they were in theory and what could've been, Jones vs. Aspinall will be remembered mainly for one thing — how Jones retired to avoid it.