UFC mailbag: Jon Jones, Belal Muhammad, and the meritocracy of title contention

Howdy, y’all. Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend (or just a regular weekend if you’re not in the United States or Canada). We’re in the middle of a pretty down period right now as we wait to get to UFC 306, aka Noche UFC, so let’s answer a real grab bag of questions including Jones Jones vs. Tom Aspinall, unfortunate UFC title challengers, and UFC’s broadcasting future.

Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall

“Being unbiased, how would you see a matchup between Aspinall vs Jones going? How’d they both come out of their corners, who takes the center first, does Jones circle away while Aspinall chases him/cuts him off, etc. I’d really like to hear how you imagine it goes/ends? Thanks.”

As the founder of the #GaslightJonJones and #ChickensArentGOATs movement, I am one of the leading voices on calling out Jones for his ridiculous focus on this Stipe Miocic fight. I, like ever other rational fan, would like to see the champion unify his title with the interim champion and fight someone who isn’t a 42-year-old retired fighter who has not fought in three years and hasn’t won a fight since the Trump administration. Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall is the fight we should get and it’s the one I want to see, because I have no idea what happens!

For as much of a “Jon Jones hater” as I may be, I have never once disputed the man’s abilities. Simply put, he is one of the most talented fighters to compete in MMA. He’s probably the best clinch fighter in MMA history, and if he chose to do it more often, the same might be said of his top position game. My only real issue with Jones over the past few years of his career (prior to the ridiculous current stuff) is that he somehow got it in his head he should be a long-range kickboxer when that’s actually what he’s worst at.

If young Jon Jones fought Thiago Santos, he would have tackled him and obliterated him on the floor instead of almost losing a bad kickboxing match to a guy without working knees. But that Jones was absent for most of his second light heavyweight title run. Granted, it came back against Ciryl Gane, but was that a one-time thing? We have no idea. Jones is absolutely capable of coming out, tackling Aspinall to the ground, and elbowing his face off. But he’s also just as likely to come out and say,z “I will avoid engaging at all costs with oblique kicks and jabs and — oh shit, where did that right hand come from, why am I looking up at the lights?”

And on the other side of the matchup, we really have no clue how good Aspinall is. He’s obviously very good, but this is like when Francis Ngannou took heavyweight by storm: He was colding people so quickly, the only thing we really knew was he was big, athletic, and hit super hard. Aspinall is not a defensive genius but hasn’t had to be because his offense is so overwhelming. But how does he look if Jones can take his punches and make him fight for longer than 60 seconds? This could easily be a Miocic vs. Ngannou 1 situation all over again.

That’s why this is the fight that needs to happen. Jones is going to slaughter Miocic in almost embarrassing fashion. Maybe in his prime, Stipe could have presented a challenge, but Cleveland’s finest is 42 years old, inactive, and hasn’t looked really good since the first Francis fight back in 2018 (yes, he beat Daniel Cormier twice — after getting slept — but Cormier was also an old man at that point). But against Aspinall, anything could happen.

In the dark, I’d pick Aspinall to beat Jones, but it wouldn’t be confidently. How could it be when he’s facing an all-time great? But Jones is also older, inactive, coming off an injury, and has never been his best against fighters who can match his size and physicality. Aspinall is big, athletic, fast, and hits harder. Best guess is this would look like the Dominick Reyes fight, where Aspinall is simply faster than Jones and Jones doesn’t want to engage for fear of getting clubbed.

More Jon Jones

“Which would be a worse title run? Bisping ducking Whittaker and Romero to fight Hendo and GSP or Jones ducking Aspinall for Stipe?”

I think both are bad yet simultaneously explicable.

Here is where I will defend Jon Jones just a little bit: At the time of the original fight booking, Jones vs. Miocic wasn’t completely absurd. Was it still a little dumb considering what Sergei Pavlovich was doing? Yes. But there’s a bit of precedent for a former champion getting a shot at the new champ, particularly when it’s two Hall of Famers. (Granted, the fight would have made the most sense for the vacant belt instead of Gane, but alas.)

The issue is that Jones vs. Miocic had a sell-by date that was almost up, and when Jones got hurt, the expiration passed by a lot. It’s like if you have some ground beef in the fridge that’s just on the edge and then you decide to go out of town for the weekend instead of making hamburgers that night. You don’t come back on Monday and fire up the grill. When that fight fell through and an interim champion was crowned, it should have been it.

Along these lines, I can also accept Michael Bisping’s title run. The Georges St-Pierre matchup falls under the same lines as the Jones-Miocic fight, only we didn’t wait two years for it, so it gets a pass (even though everyone knew GSP was retiring afterward). It’s the Dan Henderson title defense that’s truly indefensible. That being said, I was actually in support of it at the time because I wanted Henderson to get a belt and figured Yoel Romero would eventually get the title. I now regret this greatly as Romero was 100 percent the best middleweight on Earth for a period of time and people who weren’t there won’t know it now.

So on paper, Bisping’s is probably worse, but that’s not factoring in one very important thing: Jones’s title is hogwash.

Like him or not, Michael Bisping won the undisputed title fair and square by knocking out the champion. Jones won his heavyweight belt by submitting a guy who lost to the champion. It’s not the same. Bisping may have tarnished the belt a bit by fighting people outside the line of contenders, but he started with the true title. Jones didn’t win the lineal belt and now isn’t fighting the guy who would legitimize his title. I think that’s worse, but I won’t die on this hill.

Neither of them is the worst though. Germaine de Randamie winning the featherweight title by beating Holly Holm (and cheating during the fight) only to then refuse to fight Cris Cyborg and thus be stripped, that’s the worst title reign in UFC history.

Belal Muhammad

“Is Belal’s choice of Kamaru Usman over Shavkat Rakhmonov the lamest championship choice ever? Much worse than Bisping-Henderson was to me.”

Along these lines, let’s talk about the current welterweight champion.

The entire Belal vs. Shavkat thing is a case of poor communication and really poor PR. Belal Muhammad has not chosen Kamaru Usman over Shavkat Rakhmonov. He’s just doing a really, really bad job of managing this situation.

After Muhammad won the title at UFC 304, UFC officials were quick to throw out Usman as a possible opponent. Is this silly? Of course. But it’s in line with the above-mentioned instances of trying to squeeze the last bit of juice they can out of former champions. That isn’t Muhammad’s fault, that’s on UFC. What is Muhammad’s fault is how he’s responded to what’s transpired.

Reportedly, UFC asked him to make a quick turnaround to fight Shavkat in October and he said no. That’s entirely reasonable! He just won the title and UFC asked him to turn around in two months to defend. Even they won’t be mad about him saying no to that. It’s not a reasonable request. But then when Shavkat put this out in the streets, Muhammad’s response wasn’t, “Yeah man, I turned down the date, not you. We can go in December or sometime next year, just not in eight weeks.” Instead, he got mad and tried to dismiss Shavkat, poorly.

Ultimately, Muhammad isn’t ducking Shavkat. They’re going to fight, probably in December. But by handling it this way, Belal introduced a silly narrative that didn’t need to be there, which is made all the worse by his run up to the title, where he made it known he was willing to fight anyone at any time. If you change your energy, even for very good reasons, you’re inviting this sort of stuff in. It’s just terrible brand management from him.

Fantasy matchmaking

“Top 5 matchups you’d make in the current UFC roster that isn’t currently booked?”

These need no explanation.

1. Dricus du Plessis vs. Jiri Prochazka
2. Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall
3. Alex Pereira vs. Magomed Ankalaev
4. Zhang Weili vs. Tatiana Suarez
5. Robelis Despaigne vs. Chris Barnett

TV rights and PPV

“Do you ever see the UFC signing a deal with a major network and make the current PPV events free?”

Yes, but not for some time. And also, that might be disastrous for the fan viewing experience.

Though it’s been the standard for UFC since it’s beginning, the pay-per-view model is near the end of its life cycle. It’s a dinosaur in terms of the content wars, and as UFC continues to bump the price, the cliff races every faster toward us. In the not-too-distant future, it simply won’t be the most profitable option.

Now, that day is still a long way off, in part because UFC seems intent on keeping it that way. But aside from the broad bend of market forces pushing pay-per-views to extinction, I think there are two key things that will help speed the process along for the UFC.

First is that UFC and WWE are now in the same company, and with that comes shared information. Given how WWE’s popularity has exploded over the past several years, at some point someone at TKO is going to attempt to unify the business models under the assumption that what works for one will work for the other.

Second, eventually someone is going to godfather offer them out of pay-per-view. Live sports are the cash cow of the modern media landscape. It’s why every NFL/NBA/NHL/Premier League/any other league contract is always massive when it comes up for grabs. Live sports are a foundational part of viewership and subscriptions. If, say, Netflix decides to make a push for live sports, why would they add a pay-per-views model into their current platform? Just buy UFC rights outright and stream big events and small ones the same way WWE does with Paramount. UFC won’t care so long as it gets paid.

All that being said, that’s probably a bad outcome for us, the viewers. While the pay-per-view model is onerous on our wallets, it may honestly be the last line of defense from every UFC event turning into an APEX show. When UFC got all that guaranteed money from ESPN, the quality of their standard product dropped off dramatically, as they replaced good, mid-level talent with Contender Series labor on cheap contracts. What happens if they don’t even have to sell pay-per-views anymore? I don’t know, but at some point I think we’re going to find out.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for everyone who sent in tweets (Xs?)! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.