Daniel Cormier believes Jon Jones might have to settle for a little bit less than he’s expecting to be paid for a much-anticipated grudge match with Tom Aspinall.
Jones and Aspinall have been locked into fight rumors for over a year now, with Jones holding the UFC’s undisputed heavyweight title and Aspinall reigning as interim champion. This tricky situation developed in November 2023, when Aspinall was booked to fight Sergei Pavlovich for the interim belt at UFC 295 after an injury caused the postponement of Jones vs. Stipe Miocic, which eventually took place at UFC 309.
Plenty of public negotiations have occurred between the two, with Jones stating flatly that he wants “f*ck you money” to face Aspinall, who Jones has consistently dismissed as a worthy challenger despite the British star’s 8-1 UFC record. Commentator Joe Rogan recently mentioned on his podcast that he heard Jones is asking for $30 million to fight Aspinall, a rumor that Cormier addressed on a recent podcast.
Cormier pointed to the announced $16 million Madison Square Garden gate of UFC 309 as justification for Jones’ demand, even if he thinks the actual payday could fall short of that mark.
“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.”
As a point of comparison, Cormier used UFC megastar Conor McGregor to show how far Jones has to go in terms of box office relevance. Though Jones has a case to be considered the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time, he still has a fraction of the drawing power of McGregor, who has headlined several of the highest-grossing pay-per-views in combat sports history.
“Conor McGregor comes back to fight and goes, ‘I want $30 million to fight,” the UFC considers it,” Cormier said. “Why? Because when Conor McGregor was scheduled to fight at International Fight Week, the gate was $22 million. Sustainable business. You’ve got to be able to sustain your business if you’re going to be paying those types of numbers.
“Conor makes $22 million at the gate, Conor has sponsorships, Conor definitely sells a million and a half, two million pay-per-views, you can almost understand Conor McGregor saying ‘Give me $30 million’ and why it might happen. I don’t know if Jones does that.”
Cormier still thinks Jones will be satisfied should he eventually sign on the dotted line to fight Aspinall. As frustrating as Jones’ refusal to acknowledge the interim champion as his next challenger has been for media and fans, his attitude has arguably built up even more interest in the fight, whether it’s to see Jones assert himself as the true king of the heavyweight division or if Aspinall could become the first fighter to hand Jones a true defeat.
It’s this long game that Cormier feels he has to give Jones credit for.
“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 beats Tom Aspinall after Tom Aspinall being the guy that everybody thought could beat him. You’ve got Tom Aspinalld oing 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.
In Cormier’s prime, he also reigned as a two-division champion at heavyweight and light heavyweight. And while he was happy with his pay, he says it was nowhere near what Jones is allegedly asking for.
Even considering that fighters are likely paid more now than when Cormier was competing, he still expects Jones and his team to have to hustle for an eight-figure payday.
“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.”
