Jon Jones recently reacted to Daniel Cormier claiming that his retirement was a way of quitting the UFC to avoid fighting Tom Aspinall. Jones surprisingly avoided taking shots at his longtime rival and chose to respond with a philosophical take.
For context, Cormier recently slammed Jones for retiring when Tom Aspinall was waiting for a UFC heavyweight title unification fight. In an interview on the Pound 4 Pound podcast, Cormier said:
"Jon quit. It's true. Call it what it is. Jon quit. Bro, I said this on my YouTube channel when Jon Jones and I were fighting, he says, 'I will see in the octagon a 38-year-old man while I'm just entering into my prime.' Those words are now the exact same words that can be spoken to him on the other side. When the words were related to him, he said I'm out. I'm not doing it. That's why I said he quit."
He continued:
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"He could have said that a long time ago, because you know why he didn't. He was trying to convince himself that he still could put in the work necessary to go beat this dude [Aspinall]."
After an X user asked Jones about Cormier's comments, the UFC icon responded by iterating a message of 'constant evolution' and wrote:
"Sometimes you gotta know when to quit, sometimes you gotta know when to let things go. We should be constantly evolving, quitting certain things could be the best decision a person ever made."
Daniel Cormier previews hypothetical Tom Aspinall vs. Jon Jones heavyweight fight
Despite their fierce rivalry, Daniel Cormier would back Jon Jones to beat Tom Aspinall in a potential fight. In the same interview, Cormier questioned the Englishman's experience in the latter rounds of a fight and said:
"Gun to my head, I would have said Jon Jones will beat him right now. Tom was never pushed to those championship rounds...You needed to fight Tom now when he doesn't have those experience, especially as Jon Jones."
Catch Daniel Cormier's comments below (23:19):