UFC veteran Daniel Cormier does not believe heavyweight champion Jon Jones will earn $30 million if he decides to fight Tom Aspinall but recognises it as a smart move.
Heavyweight champion Jon Jones recently came out of hiatus to battle and defeat longtime rival Stipe Miocic.
Before the fight, Jones said he would be retiring after the fight, but his win over Moicic has emboldened him to take on more fights as he called out Alex Pereira for a BMF fight. Although the fighter believes he has gotten to a place in his career where he can pick his opponents, UFC CEO Dana White has said the fighter will have to face interim heavyweight champ Tom Aspinall in his next match. The interim champion has been out for blood and has constantly called out the champ for a battle. Still, Jones continually dismissed the Briton, believing the fighter was not up to his level and would rather face more challenging opponents.
Negotiations have been on for the fight, and Jones finally succumbed and agreed to a fight on the condition that he gets “f*ck you money” for the bout. In a recent podcast, host Joe Rogan said Jones was asking for a $30 million payday for the fight, but UFC commentator Daniel Cormier says the pay may not be up to what Jones expects.
“Now when you start looking at it like that, you start going, I don’t know if his ask is as crazy as people are saying,” Cormier said on his YouTube. “You can do 16 mil at the gate, you can do whatever you do on pay-per-view, you’ve got sponsorships for the fight night, those aren’t yours, you are bringing them on, but there are sponsors on fight night, now that ask is not so crazy.
“Rogan thinks the UFC will pay the $30 million to get Jon Jones in there with Tom Aspinall. I’m not sure he gets to 30, but if you ask for 30 and you get 20 or you get 15, that’s a win for Jon Jones on his way out. Especially living in Albuquerque, where everything is so dang cheap, he’s not living in California.”
Cormier acknowledges Jones as a respectable fighter and a beast in the cage, but he doesn’t think the heavyweight champ can pull the numbers needed to get that payday. He said Conor McGregor has more chances of pulling this number as the Irishman has made over one million PPV in the past.
Cormier understands the champ’s dismissal of Aspinall and has said that whether or not the fighter accepts this fight will not affect his legacy in his career. However, the UFC Hall of Famer cannot deny that the champ’s refusal to fight has garnered more interest in the fight.
“Jones said, ‘I ain’t doing it,’ so then it made people go, ‘I want this. I want this,’ Cormier said. “And when you want something—especially you, the fan, because you drive everything—when you want something bad, the UFC tends to make it happen. Will it make it happen to the tune of 30 mil, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that it would happen, but what I do know is they will be far more willing to have the conversation.
“So for all the time everybody has said how horrible Jones is, ‘He’s stupid, he’s an idiot,’ me being at the lead of this, very smart in the way that he’s approached this especially if he wins. Imagine if what happens to mixed martial arts if Jon Jones beat Tom Aspinall after Tom Aspinall being the guy that everybody thought could beat him. You’ve got Tom Aspinall doing what he’s done to the heavyweight division. Imagine if [Jones] wins. Imagine the position he will find himself in in terms of negotiating power then.
“I’ll tell you, guys, right now as a person that has been involved in big fights, a person that has sold pay-per-views, a person that at his time was at the top of the pay scale in the UFC as the heavyweight and light heavyweight champion, $30 million was literally a world away from anything we were making,” Cormier said. “I remember when I got paid in New York, I got a big bump to take a fight on three weeks’ notice, which ultimately became my salary, and people were astounded with the number. But I will tell you, it was a fraction of what that number that he’s asking for is. It was nowhere near that.”
Jones is undoubtedly a future UFC Hall of Famer. He has dominated the light heavyweight division for years and reigns as the heavyweight champion. While Jones can walk away from the sport of MMA today with his legacy intact, the Aspinall fight is the clear direction for clarity at heavyweight.
