One year ago, the UFC heavyweight division took a gut punch it still hasn’t fully recovered from. On 21 June 2025, UFC CEO Dana White stepped in front of cameras in Baku, Azerbaijan, and announced that Jon Jones — reigning heavyweight champion and the greatest fighter in the promotion’s history — had retired. Just like that, the most anticipated division in MMA felt like a deflated balloon.
How the UFC Heavyweight Division Fell Apart After Jon Jones’ Retirement
Tom Aspinall, then the interim champion, got bumped up to undisputed champion almost as an afterthought. The problem? He inherited a stale roster with no credible marquee challengers. The superfight with Jones that the entire MMA world had been building towards for months simply evaporated. White himself admitted he thought the bout was done on multiple occasions — and his visible frustration at that Baku presser said everything that needed saying.
Then came the twist nobody needed. Less than a month later, on the ESPYS red carpet, Jones looked directly into a camera and said, “I’m back.” He cited the UFC’s planned White House event as motivation for unretiring. For fight fans, it was salt in an open wound. A match between a living legend and an in-his-prime finisher like Aspinall would have been one of the biggest UFC bouts in years. Instead, it became a saga of will-he-won’t-he that drained whatever energy the division had left.
Moreover, when Aspinall finally got his first title defence — against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 — the result was a no-contest, muddied by a pair of eye pokes. Cruel doesn’t cover it. The division had essentially been frozen since Jones’ contentious victory over Stipe Miocic in 2024, and its first meaningful title fight in two years ended without a winner. That said, Gane entered as a heavy underdog and looked genuinely competitive before the stoppage, which at least gave the division a pulse.
Gane, Pereira and the Cautious Hope Keeping the Division Alive
Unfortunately, any momentum was swiftly strangled. Four months after the Gane fight, Aspinall revealed he was suffering from double vision and restricted eye movement in both eyes, pushing an already-delayed rematch into the indefinite future and raising genuine questions about whether he would ever compete again. His new manager, boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, is now publicly feuding with the UFC over Aspinall’s contract — another headache the division didn’t need.
Nevertheless, two significant developments have nudged the heavyweight conversation forward. First, two-division champion Alex Pereira made the jump to heavyweight, instantly injecting star power into a desperately thin weight class. Second, a rough-edged newcomer named Hokit emerged as a genuine wildcard, defeating Curtis Blaydes in a back-and-forth brawl at UFC 327 in Miami and breaking into the UFC top five — before dimming his own spotlight with shameful post-fight comments at the White House event, where he also defeated Derrick Lewis.
As things stand, Gane is the division’s most convincing bright spot, though his second-round knockout of Pereira at UFC Freedom 250 drew scrutiny for strikes near the back of Pereira’s head. Pereira remains a star, but he looked a step slower at heavyweight than he did at light heavyweight. Jones is still nominally retired — and still not entirely believable in that role. According to UFC.com, no date has been set for Aspinall’s return.
The division is not quite as bleak as it was on that dispiriting night in Baku twelve months ago. But the frustration of that evening hasn’t gone anywhere either. Here’s hoping another year finally delivers what heavyweight has been promising for so long.