While Jones<\/a> has just retired and left UFC<\/a> fans frustrated by not getting the Aspinall fight over the line, he has still had callouts from Bo Nickal, who challenged him to a wrestling match<\/a>.<\/p>\n When he was competing in the octagon as the organisation\u2019s next big thing, he was the young upstart calling out a whole host of competition, even training partners and friends.<\/p>\n Rashad Evans reveals the one-word response from Jon Jones in phone call prior to 2012 fight<\/p>\n Rashad Evans, an MMA staple, used to be friends with the elite wrestler before his title success.<\/p>\n Both were in the same stable and light heavyweight division, Evans was supposed to have a shot at the title belt until he suffered an injury.<\/p>\n But after becoming the youngest champion at 23, the New Yorker called out his teammate much to his surprise.<\/p>\n Speaking to the Pound 4 Pound podcast, he said: \u201cI started to hear that he was talking s- \u2013 \u2013 and then he was talking about how he will whoop me. I was hearing through the grapevine vine and then he made it public, and he was talking to Ariel Helwani.<\/p>\n \u201cBack then, I was a young man, I wanted to fight everybody too, so when he said that, I was like \u2018Oh word\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Kamura Usman and Henry Cejudo asked Evans how he dealt with the challenge by the future Hall of Famer, with \u2018Suga\u2019 revealing the short response from the champion.<\/p>\n He laughed: \u201cI\u2019m calling him up, I\u2019m like you said, you\u2019ll fight me this, that, and the other.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was just like \u2018Yeah\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Rashad would lose a unanimous decision to Jones in their 2012 fight and never have the chance to avenge his defeat.<\/p>\n \u2018Very difficult\u2019 for Tom Aspinall to reach Jon Jones level, says Khabib Nurmagomedov<\/p>\n While many still have questions over the legacy of the MMA star, Khabib Nurmagomedov believes reaching the levels of the now-retired fighter is difficult for anyone but especially Aspinall.<\/p>\n Speaking in a recent interview, he claimed: \u201cSo, whether or not he should\u2019ve fought Aspinall, that question will probably always be out there.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s one question. Another is when Aspinall completes his career and Jon Jones finishes his, only then will people understand their levels.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThen we\u2019ll really be able to compare. For Aspinall to reach Jones\u2019 level, his legacy, that\u2019ll be extremely hard. Very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Nurmagomedov himself is considered to be in the conversation as one of the greatest of all time after remaining undefeated in his career.<\/p>\n Of course, the British heavyweight is only at the beginning of his journey, and he could always exceed the levels of his predecessors in the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A UFC legend reveals the phone call he had with Jon Jones after \u2018Bones\u2019 called him out for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,1866,3627,638,82,1972,640],"class_list":["post-23297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-jon-jones","tag-khabib-nurmagomedov","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-tom-aspinall","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2185190977-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Cooper Neill\/Zuffa LLC<\/p>\n