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Jon Jones will finally face Stipe Miocic on November 16 at UFC 309, says Dana White

Jon Jones has not defended the UFC belt once since winning it in March 2023. (Photo by Louis Grasse/PxImages/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

For those still waiting to see Jon Jones fight Stipe Miocic, there is once again a light at the end of the tunnel.

The UFC heavyweight champion will face the former titleholder at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, Dana White told Complex. The UFC president declined to comment on what will happen after the fight, but said he expects that if Jones wins, he will want to face his top challenger, Tom Aspinall, rather than pull out of the fight.

From the complex:

“Jon Jones will fight in November at Madison Square Garden. And if he or Stipe wins, then we'll see what happens next. Who will retire, whatever. Do I think Stipe will retire? I do. I do think he will. But you never know. Stipe may want to take the challenge, but I know for a fact that if Jon Jones wins this fight and all the talk is out there, there's no way he's going to fight Aspinall.”

To put it simply, the Jones-Miocic fight has been a long time in the making, and for some, it has even damaged the prestige of the UFC heavyweight belt.

Jones defeated Ciryl Gane to win the vacant belt in March 2023. He immediately challenged Miocic, who had lost the belt to Francis Ngannou two years earlier, and the fight was officially announced for November 11 at UFC 295 the following July. That fight was canceled in October when it was announced that Jones had suffered a torn pectoral muscle that required surgery. It took nearly a year for the next date for the fight to be set.

Jones and Miocic have fought each other once in the last four years and are now 37 and 42 years old respectively. Gane is the only one of the UFC's top five heavyweights to have been defeated by either of them.

While all this was happening, Tom Aspinall was shooting up the rankings and now holds the interim belt. Normally an interim belt is a ticket to the next championship fight, but White had Aspinall defend it against Curtis Blaydes instead. Aspinall is now ahead of Jones in several heavyweight rankings and has repeatedly urged Jones to give him a chance instead of the aging Miocic.

Despite all the criticism, White is sticking to the Jones-Miocic plan and wants to pit the best MMA fighter of all time against the best UFC heavyweight of all time. Of course, only if he doesn't get injured.

Speaking of a long wait for a fight, Michael Chandler will also face Charles Oliveira at UFC 309. It's been nearly two years since Chandler last fought at UFC 281 in November 2022, and the fighter was waiting all that time for a fight against Conor McGregor, who also went up in smoke.

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