Michael Bisping has full confidence that Tom Aspinall will be the one to solve the Jon Jones puzzle – and quite easily.
Interim UFC heavyweight champion Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) is edging closer to his highly anticipated title-unification bout with Jones (28-1 MMA, 22-1 UFC).
According to DraftKings, Aspinall is currently a small -130 favorite to beat +110 underdog Jones, who, outside of a disqualification loss to Matt Hamill early in his career, has never lost in MMA. Speaking in an interview with Carl Froch, Bisping doesn’t disagree with the odds.
“And he should be,” Bisping said. “Listen, Jon Jones is great, and you can’t deny what he’s done in the octagon, the career that he’s had, and he’s technically unbeaten. However, everyone meets their match eventually. I think Tom Aspinall is the new generation, he’s the new breed, and he will go down probably as the greatest mixed martial artist that we’ve ever had. He’s elite as a heavyweight. A lot of the heavyweights are very good, they’re very strong, they’re powerful, but they’re not as quick and as agile and as technical as Tom.
“Tom’s the whole package. Tom’s like a heavyweight Georges St-Pierre. He’s got no weak areas. He’s got absolute knockout power, super disciplined, super agile on the feet, he finishes everyone really, really quickly. However, he hasn’t gone up against somebody like Jon Jones because the competition in the heavyweight division isn’t necessarily there on a technical level. Jon Jones is, and Jon Jones has fought way better competition than Tom, but Jon hasn’t fought anyone like Tom, either.”
Aspinall’s past five wins have come by first-round knockout, and 14 of his 15 professional wins have come in Round 1. Bisping went as far as to say that Jones would suffer the same fate as Aspinall’s previous opponents.
“I would be very surprised – and this sounds disrespectful, but I’d be very surprised if it got out of the first round,” Bisping said.
