Aspinall said on The MMA Hour today, that the original plans as basically told to him, were to wait around until the fight was over. As Aspinall was under the impression, that the UFC thought both Jon Jones and Stipe were going to retire. So they were going to have Pavlavich be the backup fighter, but were expecting Jones & Stipe to both retire after, thus eventually booking Aspinall vs Pavlavich next year for the vacant Heavyweight belt anyways.
So, now that it's an interim belt and Jones will likely be out for a year, I could see a scenario where they let the winner defend the Interim belt sometime next year, maybe even twice and then when Jones returns, they can just do Jon Jones vs Stipe for the HW Title once and for all. It might still end in a double retirement, or if Jon retains, perhaps they could convince him to stay and unify against Aspinall or Pavlavich. If he doesn't want to, he'll just retire and then they'll elevate whoever was the interim champion to full champion.
