It's possible but there's no evidence Jon would do that. If you look through his career and how often he fought he's never really went longer than 7 or 8 months without defending while he held it. Obviously this injury was a huge setback but prior history theres no evidence of him stalling. I mean of course things could have changed but I don't know. Jon straight up alpha'd Daniel Cormier I don't think he's scared of Tom Aspinall. Right now Jon Dana and Stipe are trying to make a little moolah.It's anyone's guess.
The thing about Jones is, he's enough of an asshole that he could choose to sit around after the Stipe fight for a year or more "deliberating" over his next move just to decide on retiring at the end of it anyway.
Meaning Tom would have to keep defending the interim belt, with there being no carrot on the end of the stick, no Jones fight at the end of the tunnel.
And let's be honest here, everybody can see Jones pulling something like this out of pure spite.
How many times will Aspinall defend the interim belt?
DC was 34 when Jones beat him.
That's the usual logic of it, but Jon fans have informed me repeatedly "The Stipe fight was already signed" which apparently invalidates decades of understanding of what an interim belt is and what the definition of undisputed champion is.Interim belts should only be defended once, in a direct fight with the former champ. there's no such thing as the former champ doing another different fight - that automatically should invalidate any of his belt claims and transform the interim into the real belt.
HW championships has always been hard to defend. I believe Stipe is number 1 with around 6 title fight wins. I believe in terms of title defenses. Stipe is tied with Fedor at 3. It is honestly hard to stay fighting the best all the time.
He likely won't fight Gane at MSG because Gane is fighting at the end of September in ParisI think he'll beat Blaydes, then he should call for Gane at MSG, co-main to Jones/Stipe. I think he beats Gane as well. I'm not sure there's a HW that will beat Tom atm or in the foreseeable future.
Considering Jones will beat Stipe and stick until Nov 25 to fight... Pereira