Jon Jones Willing to Vacate Heavyweight Title After UFC 309 to Fight Alex Pereira

Jon Jones clarifies that the heavyweight
title would not necessarily have to be at stake if he were to fight
Alex Pereira and he has another belt in mind.

Full interview with the 🐐 coming soon… pic.twitter.com/R43YlfB9Ze

— Aaron Bronsteter (@aaronbronsteter)
November 11, 2024

Jon
Jones remains more interested in a future fight against
Alex
Pereira than a heavyweight title unification bout with Tom
Aspinall.

Jones was originally supposed to defend his heavyweight title
against Stipe
Miocic at UFC 295 in November 2023 before he was forced out
with an injury. Tom
Aspinall went on to knockout Sergei
Pavlovich in a short-notice interim title fight on the same
card.

Despite Aspinall having defended his title since then, Jones has
insisted on defending his strap against Miocic at UFC 309
on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York. And “Bones”
seemingly won’t grant Aspinall a title unifier even after UFC 309.
While Jones has hinted at retirement following UFC 309, he wants to
fight light heavyweight champ Alex
Pereira instead of Aspinall if he continues.

According to Jones, the UFC 295 clash between Aspinall and
Pavlovich shouldn’t have been for an interim title in the first
place. To avoid the confusion, Jones is even willing to vacate his
heavyweight title if he successfully defends it at UFC 309 and
fight “Poatan” for the BMF title instead.

“It would be cool to fight over the heavyweight championship, but
I’d also willingly give up the heavyweight championship,” Jones
told Aaron Bronsteter. “I walked away from the light heavyweight
championship and I would love to walk away from this one as well,
on top… I love the position that I’m in right now. Fighting Pereira
for the [BMF] belt, that would be cool. We both have two belts in
two weight classes and the night we’d fight, we’d be fighting for
our third belt, which would be the [BMF]. How cool would that
be?”

Jones made won the heavyweight title in his divisional debut last
year with a first-round submission win over Ciryl Gane
in his return to the Octagon after a three-year hiatus. Meanwhile,
Miocic hasn’t fought since a brutal knockout loss against Francis
Ngannou in 2021. Aspinall has lost just once in UFC competition
— due to a knee injury suffered against Curtis
Blaydes — and he avenged that defeat at UFC 304 this past July.
Only one of “Honey Badger’s” opponents have made it past the first
round in the UFC. Pereira, a former middleweight champion, has
three 205-pound title defenses to his credit.