Tom Aspinall’s father drops bold claim about Jon Jones win over Ciryl Gane at UFC 285

While speaking to Petesy Carrol for Uncrowned, Andy Aspinall looked ahead to his son’s first title defence and addressed some of the comparisons being made to previous fights.

Andy made it clear that Jones’ win over Gane has not shaped their approach to this fight.

He believes the outcome of that bout was more about circumstance than a repeatable formula.

“I honestly think if Jon Jones fought [Gane] 100 times that same thing wouldn’t happen again. I really don’t think it would.

“I think [Gane] had a bad day at the office. We’ve all had them, but usually when you have them you don’t have millions of people watching you. He got caught, it happens, but we can’t go in thinking that the Jones fight is the perfect blueprint.”

“If it takes Tom five rounds to beat him, does it really matter? People will probably say, ‘Jon will definitely beat Tom,’ if that happened. But it doesn’t work like that,” Andy stated.

Ciryl Gane’s Jon Jones comments backfired on him

Gane probably did not think his comments about Jones’ move to heavyweight would come back to haunt him in the way they did.

Before he ever stepped into the cage with him, ‘Bon Gamin’ had already tipped ‘Bones’ for success in the division.

Speaking to LowKickMMA, he said: “Everybody knows that he’s the GOAT in the light heavyweight (division), that’s (for) sure.

“I don’t know if he fought in the heavyweight division in his career…I don’t know exactly but I think he has a good fight IQ. (His) physicality is really good. Everybody knows that, so I think he can do something really great (at heavyweight).”

He added: “He’s tall, so now he’s even more heavy. It’s new for him, but he improved with his weight.”