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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Historic is going down right now in the world of MMA and specifically the ufc. As you have seen over the last couple of days, people are getting fed up with the UFC refusing to strip Jon Jones of the undisputed UFC heavyweight championship. And they are so fed up that they have all signed their names to a verified petition to the UFC to strip Jon Jones and either make Tom Aspinall the undisputed heavyweight champion or make his next fight for the undisputed heavyweight championship. And I'm wearing a West Brom soccer jersey because I don't really have anything else English and I'm trying to support because this is a moment in time that you want to be on the right side of history. And if you're an MMA fan and you're looking at this situation, Tom Aspinall truly is and should be the heavyweight champion of the world. Why the UFC refuses to strip Jon Jones? Not in that way. He is down in Thailand, maybe doing some of that stuff himself, but I don't know. But we're going to talk about it today. This is monumental. Fans banding together behind the encouragement of, quite frankly, some of the biggest MMA YouTubers on the planet, MMA guru Lucas Tracy, Ariel Helwani, and more. Telling the UFC and telling the industry itself, the most simple answer is right in front of you. Do what is best for your own sport or risk losing hundreds of thousands of fans. What do I mean? The Breakdown so ladies and gentlemen, like I said, a petition to strip Jon Jones of the undisputed UFC heavyweight championship belt has now reached 133,000 verified signatures. Decision maker Dana White. The issue Jon Jones is now the longest reigning champion in UFC heavyweight history and only has two fights in that time period. There's a clear interim champion, Tom Aspinall, who has defended his interim championship belt. Aspinall is ready to fight Jones. Jones refuses to fight him. Therefore, we as fans must let Dana White know it is time to strip Jon Jones of the heavyweight title. He clearly has no intentions of fighting anyone soon. Well said by Mr. Tony has died. We're going to give a Shyamala Hamala to him for the resurrection of passion from the UFC fan base and from hopefully the decision makers over at the ufc. I am going to sign this petition myself as well and let it be known that quite frankly, this is unacceptable for the sport of mma. I mean, we've talked about it in videos, I think earlier this week or last week. I don't remember when I did the video, but everybody is talking about it right now. It makes no sense. Jon Jones is refusing to fight. There's no reason for him to hold the belt. In fact, in the time that Jon has held the belt, the interim champion not only hasn't gotten his shot whilst holding the interim championship, the interim champion has also defended that belt while Jon holds the undisputed it makes no sense. It never has, it never will. And you won't give me an explanation that Dana or anybody else could feed you that would make it make sense. If John is refusing to fight Tom for whatever amount that the UFC has offered him, it is simple. Strip him and move on. Now the only thing that people are potentially saying could be the case for what's happening so far is that Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall may fight in the early part of 2026 on the UFC's new TV rights deal as a promised fight to the new distribut. Right, because there's a lot going on there as well. The UFC is starting to slowly but surely remove their content. Or someone is removing their content from ESPN+ as we take a look here. Welp, looks like all previous UFC bouts have been scrubbed from ESPN plus. The whole catalog is gone. Only official source for UFC past bouts is on Fight Pass. And then Zane Simon was an editor, you know, writer and podcaster, not an official source for the ufc. But still, it doesn't take, you know, more than two eyes to see what's happening here. And he says there's also still a couple of pay per views floating around. But the general consensus is simple. The UFC is probably moving either from ESPN plus to another distributor or behind ESPN new paywall, which I think is still being described as espn. And then they'll still have ESPN plus. It's all very convoluted. The point is the UFC waiting another seven months to do that would make John. I mean he already is the longest reigning UFC heavyweight champion while only having two fights. And it takes another seven months off the prime of a person than Tom Aspinall. You could build into the next big heavyweight. Look at the potential For Tom Aspinall. Is he Conor McGregor? No. But he does have a nation behind him. In fact, now he has more than a nation. He has an entire UFC fan base behind him. He has the new generation of opinionated media behind him, which no one really talks about as a global ground force. Like, if you have the support of MMA guru and his fans, like it or not, the hardcore audience of MMA is usually in that community. Lucas Tracy as well. And these numbers prove it. Like, this is not a community that can be afforded to just be overlooked, if that makes sense. Like before we had YouTubers really covering the sport, before even MMA was mainstream. You could control the narrative a bit. If you were the ufc. You could control what was said, how it was said and where it came from. I mean, look at Ariel Helwani getting ousted by Dana White all the way back when, when he broke the Brock Lesnar coming back at UFC 2 story. That was the UFC controlling the narrative. And yes, people took sides with Ariel, but you didn't really have what you have now, which is a media you can't control, that doesn't have to be at the venue, that doesn't need tickets to the event, that doesn't have to say yes or obey. They can say exactly how they feel. And it may not make a difference to the decision that the UFC makes, but it will make a difference in the long term as more and more people get fed up watching the sport they love go by the wayside in favor of business decision, decision. And I get it, the UFC is a business and it needs to make money. But let's not kid ourselves and act like the UFC is hurting for money. It's a billion dollar company with year over year massive revenue gains. If they can't throw a number at Jon Jones that he will accept, even maybe outside of the terms of what they deem fair or worthy of that fight. And Jon continues to do things the way he's been doing them, which is stuff like this where Tom is on Mighty Mouse's show. Another one, by the way. Mighty Mouse, obviously a legendary fighter and one of the greatest of all time in his own right turn, massive mma personality on YouTube, interviewed Tom and Tom said, listen, I've been inactive for nearly a year and I'm just being told to wait. I don't care about fighting Jon Jones. I just want to be the undisputed champion. And you have Jon Jones trolling, shut your mouth and do as you're told with the laughing face. So again, didn't look like John's Taking this very seriously. And now he's changed his profile picture to a duck holding the UFC championship, very much intent on trolling. And while, yeah, you know, trolling is funny or whatever, it's not when you're holding up, I would say, an entirety of a sport, quite frankly. Like, the heavyweight champion is the most important fighter in your sport, in your division, in your promotion, in the sport entirely. And when they are trolling and talking about, I'm retired, but not really, and Tom's going to do what he's told and just not a care in the world about the sport, then what are we as fans supposed to think about the sport? About the integrity of the best, fighting the best, which is always the tagline in the ufc. For the longest time, that was it. It's not even us, the fans, that think that what Jon is doing right now is wrong. It's not even us, the fans that think what the UFC is doing is wrong. It's actually the man himself, Jon Jones. He's the one that said something very similar all the way back in 2020 when he vacated the light heavyweight championship to move up to heavyweight. He said, I vacated the light heavyweight championship because I knew my heavyweight goals were going to take some time. I wasn't going to play games with the contenders and make people fight interim championship belts. There's little rest on the throne. And correctly pointed out by Ben the Bain Davis, that was a fucking lie. These things sound great in theory right at the time, John tweeting that out, whether it was earnest or he was just trying to look for some new fans as he headed to heavyweight, it doesn't hold up under scrutiny, does it? It doesn't. When you see 100,000 fans understanding what it is is going on here when for some reason the UFC cannot. It's a simple answer. And again, this has reached over 130 now. But what's it going to take for the UFC? What's it going to take for them to realize that they are cutting off their nose despite their face? Here is John one of, if not the greatest fighter to ever live. Yes. Is his legacy cemented? Yeah. This fight, in my opinion, still needs to happen. I want to see the fight. I think we as fans deserve to see the fight because there is a certain lineage with the belt. And if Tom and John are never to face off and Tom doesn't get that opportunity to take the belt off, the undisputed champion, that'd be unfortunate. Because the old saying is, to be the man you have to beat the Man. And Jon is the man that would take Tom Aspinall's career to the next level. But at the same time, I honestly think that Tom could do that without Jon at this point. He has gotten a fan base simply by being steadfast in what he has said he wants to do. He wants to be the heavyweight champion. He wants the Jon Jones fight. He's ready for the Jon Jones fight. He's calling for the Jon Jones fight. It's all he can really do. His career's being shackled and handcuffed because Jon wants to play fucking touch button Thailand, and I don't know what else, to be honest with you. I said this in the last video, you know, yeah, John should try to get every cent of what he's owed in this fight. But at the same time, the UFC has to put the big boy pants on here. And again, it's not like they haven't done it before. It's not like they're not currently doing it with other champions. Right now, guys are moving weight, refusing to defend their belt in their weight class that they have a championship in. Ilia Topuria did not want to fight at 145 anymore. Refused to fight at 145. So he vacated or they would have stripped him and he moves to 155. Same with Islam Makachev. He doesn't want to fight at 155 right now. Instead, he wants to challenge for the 170 belt. Well, you're going to have to vacate or we're going to strip you. Jon Jones does not want to defend his belt, is not going to fight anytime soon. He's clearly not going to vacate. And the UFC is standing there with their dicks in their hands. You know, there's a whole other issue that I see right now with the ufc, and it's not even hard to see. You just open your eyes and you see that there's complacency from top to bottom in the promotion. The inability to create new stars falls sometimes on the fighters, but. But also on the promotion. I'll go back to this. It's not like we haven't seen Dana do this before. I alluded to it in my last video. And I think either people have not been around MMA for a very long time or they forgot what happened when George St. Pierre, not the second time, but the first time, walked away from the sport. And what Dana White said, not 300 days later, not a year after, not when George was thinking about maybe he'll come back. The night of the fight that drew George St. Pierre away from the sport. George St. Pierre vs. Johnny Hendrix at UFC 167, a fight that a lot of people thought Johnny Hendricks did enough to win, also looked like he was on the way out the door. And this was the UFC's 20 year anniversary, and this is what Dana White had to say.
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What, what was your take? Can you explain what you said on.
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Television about you were upset that George.
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Was talking about retiring and not giving Johnny. I'm upset about him. Listen, when a guy wants to retire, I mean, did he say he wants to retire? He didn't say, I'm going to retire. I'm hanging it up. It's been great. Everybody, thanks a lot for all the years. See you later. He said, I'm going to take some time off and I'm going to. First of all, that decision, that happens, right? You don't just say, hey, I'm going to take a while off, maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't. You owe it to the fans, you owe it to that belt, you owe it to this company, and you owe it to Johny Hendrix to give him that opportunity to fight again. Unless you're going to retire. You know, I told you guys a million times, he's got plenty of money. He can retire. That's a fact. He could absolutely, positively do that. There's no, hey, listen, I'm going to go on a cruise and you know, I'm going to be gone for two years and you know, I'm going to take a hiatus. I'm going to, I'm going to take a leave of absence. I'm going to whatever the hell it was that he was saying. That's not how it works. Doesn't work that way.
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It doesn't work that way. I guess it didn't back then, but maybe it does now. Or maybe Dana should take a look in the mirror and really see what changed between then and now. Because the fighters still fight. Champions are still made. Dana's own words. Jon Jones especially has enough money to retire. And if you troll John on Twitter, he's going to make sure he tells you how much money he's got in cash, real estate and other ventures that allow him to go on trips to Thailand and do whatever this is in a pool full of his. So if John has money and he's wishy washy on if he's ever going to fight again, and in Dana's own words, at least when speaking about George St. Pierre, he owes it to the fans, to the company, to the belt, and to the opponent that rightfully deserves the next fight. What changed? I'll tell you what changed Dana White. The UFC's ideas about business versus sport change. You could say TKO changed the UFC. You could say endeavor, you could say money, you could say all of those things and you'd probably be right. But the point is, Dana White lost his fastball. That's what it is. That's. That's all this comes down to. Jon doing what Jon is doing is only allowable because Dana allows it to happen. Dana's the one that calls the shots here. Always has been, always will. Maybe he's having to answer to bigger names now that the TKO deal is done. But who is going to tell Dana White that Jon Jones can't be stripped to the detriment of his sport, to the detriment of future monetization of the sport? For what? The potential of a short term gain if you throw enough money at Jon Jones to come back and fight Tom Aspinall. We're so short sighted that we can't see what happens 5, 10, 15 years down the road if Tom Aspinall gets his shot. We're not willing to risk it for the biscuit. Isn't the UFC built on risks? So now, because you've eliminated all the competition, you dominated the sport, now the fans don't matter, now the fights don't matter now the sport doesn't matter. Just money, right? If you want to know why the UFC is doing this, it's because they can't. And if Jon Jones is not willing to fight, will he? Won't he? As Dana says, the simple answer always has been and always will be to strip him. I think they're going to try to wait until 2026 and make one last pitch to Jon Jones, but in doing so, again, I said it a second ago, they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. They're looking at Jon and saying, we need one more big payday out of you. And turning their back on the young, hungry heavyweight champion, rightful champion that could lead them into the next era. All because they want to hold on to whatever's left of the golden era. Jon Jones, Conor McGregor, etc. So you ask yourself, where? Why? Why are there no new stars? Why? Where are the UFC's newest stars? And yeah, sure, some of it can be attributed to the sport. Some of it can be attributed to fight style. Some of it can be attributed to just a general lack of interesting personalities in the sport. And that's fine, but this fan base is rabid and they're hungry for the next big thing. And Tom Aspinall, literally and physically, is that heavyweight young, ready to try to take over this division, to risk something and become a legend. The only thing holding him back is Jon Jones in the ufc. And the simplest answer is to look in the mirror if you're Dana White and say, why did 133,000 people sign a petition to strip my heavyweight champion if he's so popular within this sport? The Internet isn't real life. And I understand that there's something to be said for Jon Jones ability to appeal to a casual fan here in the United States. But that's your hardcore audience. That's the people that watch. Tomorrow, it'll probably be too 200,000. The next day it'll probably be 250, maybe even 300,000 people. What's the number it's going to take to wake them up? I don't know. But keep going and pressure the UFC and pressure this company to do what it always is done, or what it's always said to have wanted to do, which is have the best fight. The best. I know it's been a while since it feels like that's been the case, but we want to see it again. It's what made this company great. It's what made MMA grow. It's what made the UFC what it is. And again, for the long term health of the company, is for them to either make the fight, which they've had ample opportunity to do, I don't think it's going to happen. And if it does, we're waiting another seven months. And then even if they do make the fight, strip Jon, pay him a shit ton of money, he obviously doesn't care about the belt. And then have him fight Tom sometime in 2026, with Tom being the undisputed UFC Heavyweight champion. Because that's what he truly is. And right now, that's exactly what John isn't. A man refusing to fight and refusing to retire, hanging out in a dead space because the UFC allows it to happen. I'm not even going to ask Dana White to do the right thing. I'm just going to ask you guys to keep signing that damn petition and shout out to MMA guru, shout out to Era Hawani, shout out to Mighty Mouse, shout out to Lucas Tracy. What happens with this whole Tom Aspinall viral petition to to strip John and make Tom the rightful undisputed champion? I don't have those answers, but all you can do as fans is speak up and let your voice be heard. And y' all are doing that, so keep it going. And what happens next? I guess we'll find out. This is an I Heart podcast.