{"id":9068,"date":"2025-06-23T21:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T21:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9068\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T21:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T21:59:07","slug":"stephen-a-smith-incredibly-disappointed-by-jon-jones-ufc-retirement-handle-this-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9068\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith \u2018incredibly disappointed\u2019 by Jon Jones\u2019 UFC retirement: \u2018Handle this guy!’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephen A. Smith is fired up about Jon Jones not fighting Tom Aspinall.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Saturday, the UFC Heavyweight Champion and arguably the greatest fighter of all time officially retired from MMA<\/a>, avoiding a title unification bout with interim champion Tom Aspinall<\/a> in the process.<\/p>\n

Jon Jones<\/a> kept Aspinall waiting for nearly 600 days before he ultimately retired and fought a 42-year-old Stipe Miocic in his first title defense<\/a> instead of Aspinall.<\/p>\n

Jones has received much criticism<\/a> following his retirement decision, including claims he\u2019s \u2018ducking\u2019 the new undisputed champion.<\/p>\n

\"ImagePhoto by Jeff Bottari\/Zuffa LLCStephen A. Smith expresses disappointment on Jon Jones retiring from UFC<\/p>\n

Known for his fiery takes<\/a>, sports personality Stephen A. Smith has given his thoughts on Jones retiring without unifying the title against Aspinall in one of the biggest fights in UFC history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to accuse the greatest mixed martial artist I\u2019ve ever seen in my life in Jon \u2018Bones\u2019 Jones,\u201d Smith said of the retired UFC champion on ESPN\u2019s First Take.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have that much admiration for him\u2026 Having said that, I\u2019m incredibly, incredibly disappointed with this news,\u201d Smith said of Jones\u2019 retirement decision.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Jones] is absolutely phenomenal. He\u2019s the real deal. He\u2019s one of those dudes that a guy like Aspinall, he\u2019s been on the record saying he just irritates me and annoys me.\u00a0He doesn\u2019t even want to be asked about Tom Aspinall during interviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, now with your retirement, Aspinall is the undisputed heavyweight champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy point is, if you are a fighter, which he is at a very elite level, and that\u2019s the fight that people want to see, give us the fight that we wanna see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stephen A. Smith to Jon Jones: \u2018We wanna see you handle\u2019 Tom Aspinall<\/p>\n

Jones, 37, walks away from the UFC after 30 pro MMA fights, leaving behind what could be the biggest heavyweight fight of all time with Aspinall.<\/p>\n

Despite guarantees that the fight would happen, UFC CEO White said he did all he could to get Jones to accept, but ultimately to no avail.<\/p>\n

While Jones isn\u2019t the biggest fan of Aspinall, Smith thinks he made a mistake in not fighting the British star.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we complain about with boxing?\u201d Smith continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe complain about promoters and others getting in the way of us getting the fights that we wanna see when we wanna see it. And Jon \u2018Bones\u2019 Jones, he\u2019s literally this kind of person.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get on his nerves, one or two things will happen. They wanna kick your ass, which he\u2019s fully capable of doing and does it at an elite level, or he\u2019ll say to hell with you. I\u2019m not gonna give you the privilege of fighting me because that fighter annoyed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs opposed to looking at the audience out here spanning millions and millions of people who recognize your greatness and wanna see you against this guy who\u2019s been calling you out for the longest time. Handle it. Then, retire if you want to\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBut don\u2019t retire, because guess what? There\u2019s not really a fight out there that you\u2019re interested in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy irritates you. So to hell with it,\u201d Smith said of why Jones should fight Aspinall.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018I\u2019m not gonna give him the privilege to fight me\u2026\u2019 It ain\u2019t about that. That audience out there who loves you, who recognizes your unquestionable greatness, we wanna see you handle this guy!\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith is fired up about Jon Jones not fighting Tom Aspinall. On Saturday, the UFC Heavyweight…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5192,62,2233,5193,552,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-9068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-jon-jones","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-stephen-a-smith","11":"tag-tom-aspinall","12":"tag-ufc","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114734927951681060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}