Jon Jones vs. Alex Pereira for the BMF title? It’s an idea

Jon Jones might or might not proceed preventing past UFC 309, but when he does, the reigning heavyweight champion has declared he can be keen to return for yet one more combat towards gentle heavyweight king Alex Pereira over Tom Aspinall.

Complicating Jones’ want is the truth that Aspinall presently is the UFC interim heavyweight champ, a title he claimed in November 2023 with a knockout of Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 295. That door was opened solely as a result of Jones suffered a pectoral damage that pressured him to withdraw from his authentic date with Stipe Miocic.

If Jones, who’s flirted with retiring after UFC 309, defeats Miocic and continues his profession past Saturday evening’s fundamental occasion, many (even perhaps nearly all of) followers and pundits consider he ought to unify the title with Aspinall, UFC CEO Dana White amongst them. However as far Jones is worried, these individuals are merely misguided.

“Effectively, the interim championship shouldn’t have been there within the first place,” Jones mentioned Monday in an interview with Sportsnet’s Aaron Bronsteter. “The one cause there was an interim championship combat was as a result of I bought damage, they usually wanted to maintain the significance of that Madison Sq. Backyard occasion (UFC 295). However Sergei and Aspinall shouldn’t have been preventing for an interim title within the first place. They need to’ve simply been a alternative combat, a fundamental occasion. I believe making it an interim combat was untimely, and now you will have a bunch of confused folks.”

Jones vs. Pereira for the BMF title?

When contemplating a future combat with Pereira or Aspinall, Jones views “Poatan” because the matchup that can assist his legacy extra, which is essential to him. In any case, it’s why Jones is preventing Miocic, who’s broadly thought-about the best heavyweight of all time, as an alternative of Aspinall, regardless of the previous champ’s three-and-a-half-year layoff.

Pereira, who’s the identical age as Jones (37), brings much more to the desk by way of credentials, having claimed the UFC middleweight title by knocking out Israel Adesanya earlier than he moved as much as Jones’ previous stomping grounds of sunshine heavyweight and successful 4 consecutive title fights.

If it’s the standing of the heavyweight champion that has everybody up in arms about why he ought to combat Aspinall, Jones is keen to vacate so as to make a Pereira showdown occur.

“It’d be cool to combat (Pereira) for the heavyweight championship, however I might additionally willingly hand over the heavyweight championship,” Jones mentioned. “I walked away from the sunshine heavyweight championship, and I’d like to stroll away from this one, as nicely, on high, on (my) personal phrases, good head on (my) shoulders, making a lot of cash. I really like the place that I’m in proper now.”

Jones even has an concept for the UFC to think about ought to a combat with Pereira come to fruition.

“Combating Pereira for the BMF belt, that’d be cool,” Jones mentioned. “We each have two belts in two weight lessons. The evening we fought, we’d each be preventing for our third belt, which might be the BMF. How cool would that be?”

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