Jon Jones has officially retired from professional MMA according to UFC CEO Dana White.
The UFC boss made the announcement during his post-fight press conference at UFC Baku on Saturday.
“Jon Jones called us last night and retired,” White told reporters.
“Jon Jones is officially retired. Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion of the UFC.”
After months of speculation as to when Jones would defend his UFC heavyweight championship against the interim champ it’s concluded in a rather anti-climatic manner. The promotion and the now-former champion seemed to go back and forth through the media aside from any negotiations.
White went from saying that Jones vs. Aspinall would be the biggest heavyweight fight of all time and pretty much guaranteeing the fight would happen to recently saying he’d do everything he could to book the fight.
Today’s developments clearly end his quest to put together what he felt would be the biggest fight of all time.
Jones (28-1) finishes his UFC career with 11 title defenses at light-heavyweight and one at heavyweight. He’s regarded by most as the greatest fighter of all time, and has UFC hall of famers all over his resume.
If this truly is the end of Jones in MMA it’s not the end many envisioned for him. He didn’t retire in the cage or didn’t have a farewell tour of sorts. He just called his boss and let him know.
It’s to be seen if this retirement sticks. In MMA, like other combat sports, retirements aren’t always final. Or this might be a case like Khabib Nurmagomedov who seems to actually have no intentions of returning to the sport. We’ll find out sooner or later.
That being said, Michael Jordan came back twice, right?
