Joe Rogan wouldn’t be surprised if Jon Jones retired in 2025.
Jones is the UFC heavyweight champion, having defended the belt against the now-retired Stipe Miocic at UFC 309 in November.
Britain’s Aspinall has been waiting in the wings for a title shot since he was crowned interim champion in 2023.
His last octagon appearance came in July when he knocked out Curtis Blaydes at UFC Manchester.
Since his victory over Miocic, Jones has shown little interest in facing 31-year-old Aspinall, who is from Wigan in Greater Manchester.
During UFC 309’s post-fight press conference, he suggested he would rather take on UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira, and insisted he was done with fighting ‘dangerous up-and-comers’.
Rogan spoke about the ongoing heavyweight saga on Wednesday on an episode of his podcast, where he was forced to retract on previous comments regarding Jones fighting Aspinall.
The 57-year-old claimed Jones wanted $30million to fight Aspinall, but corrected himself after UFC president Dana White contacted him to say the rumour was ‘bulls***’.
“Well, apparently Jon is thinking about retiring. And he should,” Rogan told fellow comedian Theo Von on his podcast.
“I mean, he’s going to have to some day. I’m not saying he should retire, I’m saying he should think about it.
“Give the man all the time he wants and he can fight whenever he wants to fight. That’s Jon Jones, he’s the GOAT. So leave him alone.”
Following a nine-year dominance of the light heavyweight division, Jones picked up the world title by moving up a division and submitting Ciryl Gane in March 2023.
He was originally scheduled to fight Miocic in November of that year but suffered a torn pectoral muscle in training, which led to the fight being postponed for 12 months while ‘Bones’ recovered.
In the meantime, the UFC replaced Jones vs Miocic with an interim title fight between Aspinall and Sergei Pavolvich.
The Brit won the bout via first-round knockout, thus making him Jones’ No.1 contender.
“If he [Jones] decides one day to come back and he wants to come back and fight Tom Aspinall for the heavyweight title,” Rogan added. “The question is, like, how long are you allowed to hold on to the title before they start having that conversation?
“Now, he just knocked out Stipe Miocic, so give the man some months.
“Give the man five or six months, just leave him the f*** alone! But at a certain point in time you have to decide who the heavyweight champion is.
“And if Tom is the interim heavyweight champion and Jon decides he doesn’t want to fight any more he could do that.
“And he could do that also and then come back in a year and fight for the title, he can do that, whatever he wants.
“But he might decide, ‘you know what? I’ve had an unbelievable career, never lost, except the disqualification loss to a rule that has since been reversed.
“He’s the GOAT, he retires, he’s got plenty of money. He’s got an opportunity to do some acting.”
Jones vs Aspinall would smash all sorts of records as one of the biggest UFC fights of all time.
At present, the record for the biggest purse in UFC history is the estimaed $8m Brock Lesnar earned for returning to fight Mark Hunt at UFC 200 in 2016.
Conor McGregor made around $6.8m when he became the first UFC fighter to hold two belts simultaneously by knocking out Eddie Alvarez later the same year.