Brandon Gibson is confident in how Jon Jones matches up against Tom Aspinall.
Gibson, UFC heavyweight champion Jones’ (27-1 MMA, 21-1 UFC) striking coach, has no doubt that his star student has the tools to beat interim champ Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC).
Jones isn’t sold on Aspinall being a beneficial fight for his legacy, but if the matchup were to materialize, Gibson expects Jones’ experience to play a big factor as well.
“Aspinall’s a great interim champ. He’s had a great heavyweight career so far,” Gibson told Inside Fighting. “I think there’s still a lot of unknowns, which could be a benefit to Tom, but also a lot of those unknowns could be a big benefit to us. Like, how is he going to do in deep water? How is he going to do in later rounds?
“There’ll probably be a lot of pressure on him to try to start fast. So with all that said, we have respect for all of these great opponents and champions, but I think Jon has solved a lot more complex problems, and I think just Jon’s mixed martial arts game, his IQ, his pace, his strength would all land in our favor and Jon victorious once again.”
Jones is fresh off his first title defense at heavyweight, a Round 3 TKO of Stipe Miocic less than two weeks ago in the UFC 309 main event. Meanwhile, Aspinall defended his interim title with a first-round TKO of Curtis Blayes in the UFC 304 headliner in July.
