Jon Jones is not retired. Let’s get that straight right off the bat.
Remember when UFC president Dana White sat there at a post-fight press conference in Azerbaijan in June and said that Jones had called him up and retired over the phone earlier that week? Not true. Or, well, maybe it was true at the time. For about 15 minutes. Then Jones heard there was a UFC event at the White House scheduled for the summer of 2026 and he decided he wanted to be invited. So he’s back, baby!
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Will he actually get a spot on that card? Almost certainly not, according to White. But that hasn’t discouraged the former two-division UFC champion. As he explained while at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, he’s back in the UFC drug testing pool and training like he’s got a fight coming up.
“I am not retired,” Jones said. “ … I’m training for the event. I’ll be ready for the event. That’s my goal, that’s my intention. But ultimately it’s up to the boss.”
Here’s where I’ve got to ask: What the heck did Jones actually do here? Like, what did he accomplish?
Jones retired as UFC heavyweight champion, choosing to relinquish the belt rather than defend it against Tom Aspinall (who’s since been promoted from interim champ to actual champ). Then he changed his mind just weeks later, but seemingly only so that he could fight at this one specific event.
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The UFC, for its part, does not seem to want him there. So … then … what? He gave up his UFC title just so he could get frozen out and rejected? Because that seems like a bad deal for him.
Jon Jones clarified at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards that he’s not retired after all. So where does that leave him in the UFC? (Photo by Taylor Hill/WireImage)
(Taylor Hill via Getty Images)
Granted, a no from the UFC boss at this point does not equal a no forever. It wouldn’t be the first time White reversed course and did exactly what he’d said he wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t be the second or the third or the fourth time, either. So maybe Jones has some reason to believe that he’s not just training for nothing.
But even then, what’s the likeliest outcome? If he stays in the gym and out of the police reports and thereby convinces the UFC to give him a spot on the White House lawn, wouldn’t he pretty much have to come back and fight for the UFC heavyweight title? Wouldn’t any other fight be a sad step down?
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And since Aspinall is slated to defend his belt against Ciryl Gane this fall (and since the UFC heavyweight title goes up for grabs only about once a year at this point), that would leave Jones fighting the winner.
So either he rematches Gane, who put up almost no fight at all last time and would make for a pretty disappointing comeback this time, or he fights Aspinall, who he went to great lengths to avoid just a couple months ago. And he does it all as the challenger rather than the champion, which means he almost certainly does it for less money.
Remember, this is after he reportedly refused a fight with Aspinall that would have paid him the monster purse he’d long pursued, all with help from an infusion of Saudi cash. He would essentially have negotiated a major pay cut for himself, and just to do the same thing in the end.
For a guy who loves to frame every move as part of a genius master plan, this one seems poorly thought-out. Actually, it seems not at all thought-out. It seems like Jones just didn’t want to fight Aspinall, but later decided he did want to fight at the White House.
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But is his desire to fight at a specific place strong enough to convince him to take on the opponent he seemed to want to avoid? Even if the answer is yes, what comes after that? Does he really expect the UFC to give him a shot at the heavyweight title knowing that, once the White House event is in the rearview mirror, he might go right back into retirement and leave the UFC with this same mess to clean up all over again next summer?
There is, of course, another option. Maybe Jones hopes for some other small role to play on this fight card. A non-title fight, perhaps. Something just for fun, just so he can say he was there. In which case, his hasty retirement as heavyweight champ will come to look even more like an elaborate detour around Aspinall. And, let’s be honest, he didn’t exactly beat the duck allegations on his way out the door the first time.
It’s really something, isn’t it? Jones had such an incredible career inside the cage, but was such a wreck outside it. He somehow seemed so endlessly concerned with legacy and shaping our perceptions of him, yet did more damage to himself in those regards than anyone else could have ever done to him. Even now, when he’s effectively outside the sport looking in, it’s still happening.
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The best-case scenario sees Jones talking himself out of a bunch of money and wasting a year of what’s left of his prime, all just to take the same fight with a different view in the end. That scenario also has the added benefit of making the entire MMA world very, very tired of his crap in the process.
Other scenarios involve him giving up the heavyweight title to be anything from a bit player to a complete non-participant — again, all for far less in the compensation department. Nothing about this suggests a man with a plan. It’s more like a guy who’s trying to figure it out as he goes, and without realizing how rapidly he’s running out of options.
