Let’s try this again.
For the second year in a row, the UFC has booked Jon Jones to defend the UFC heavyweight title against former two-time champ Stipe Miocic for its annual Madison Square Garden event, UFC CEO Dana White told Complex in an interview published Saturday.
“Jon Jones is gonna fight at Madison Square Garden in November,” White told the outlet.
The new fight, which will headline UFC 309 on Nov. 16, is a make-up for the original 2023 booking, which was torpedoed just over two weeks before UFC 295 by a pectoral muscle injury to Jones.
White has been steadfast in ensuring Jones vs. Miocic was rebooked as the champion’s first fight after surgery to repair the injury, and signs had indicated the fight would, in fact, come to the Garden after all even before White’s confirmation in the hours leading up to UFC 306 on Saturday at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
The laser-focused plan to ensure the two heavyweight clash for the championship came despite months of fan and media grousing that this fight was less relevant in the aftermath of Tom Aspinall’s rise to interim champion status.
Jones, the longtime former light heavyweight champion who won the vacant title last March following titleholder Francis Ngannou parting ways with the promotion, has maintained that facing Miocic, who claimed the heavyweight crown in both 2016 and 2019 but has not competed since dropping the belt to Ngannou via knockout loss in 2021, is a fight that builds his already impressive legacy.
Many have speculated that one or both of Jones and Miocic could opt to hang up their gloves after the fight — more likely in the case of 42-year-old Miocic than 37-year-old Jones.
England’s Aspinall won the interim title, which was created to fill a hole on the UFC 295 marquee after Jones’ injury, at the Garden last Nov. 11 when he knocked out heavy-hitting Russian Sergei Pavlovich in the first round.
Aspinall, by comparison young for an elite heavyweight at 30 years old, has been vocal in his desire to face Jones and unify their titles.
The Manchester native made a successful defense of his interim title in July when he knocked out Curtis Blaydes in Round 1.
White conceded to Complex that the next step for the UFC 309 headliners and his promotion’s interim heavyweight champ is uncertain nearly two months before the company’s eighth visit to the Garden.
“If [Jones] wins or Stipe wins, then we see what happens next, who will retire, whatever,” White said.
That said, the UFC’s lead mouthpiece has his thoughts on how the Jones, a native of Endicott, N.Y., who lives and trains in New Mexico, and Miocic, who doubles as an Ohio firefighter, would proceed following their long-delayed clash of titans.
“Do I think Stipe will retire? I do. I do think he will. But you never know. Stipe might want to take the challenge [against Aspinall],” White says. “But I know for a fact: If Jon Jones wins that fight, and all this talk that’s out there, there’s no way in hell he’s not fighting Aspinall.”
