Rico Verhoeven is amused at the idea of Conor McGregor or anyone else trying to use his sparring footage with interim UFC champion Tom Aspinall as analysis for a potential title unifier with Jon Jones.
Verhoeven, the current GLORY Kickboxing heavyweight champion, is a good friend of Aspinall, with the pair frequently using each other in training camps for their respective bouts. They were in the gym recently, with Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) getting some rounds for his potential backup role at UFC 309 this month when Jones (28-1 MMA, 22-1 UFC) took on Stipe Miocic, as well as assisting Verhoeven ahead of his title defense with Levi Rigters at GLORY COLLISION 7 on Dec. 7 in the Netherlands.
After Jones defeated Miocic by third-round TKO, UFC CEO Dana White said he will do everything in his power to make the fight with Aspinall next. In anticipation of that, Aspinall recently said on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that Jones is worried about facing him because of the lack of fight footage he has to prepare off.
That prompted former two-division UFC champion McGregor to chime in on social media and point to some of the sparring videos that have surfaced between Aspinall and Verhoeven, to which he said Aspinall looked “woeful.” That takeaway was comical to Verhoeven.
“Come on – me and Tom, you really, really, really think me and Tom are going to spar for real and share that on the internet? Come on,” Verhoeven told MMA Junkie. “You’ve got to be kidding me. But that’s the mindset of the world today. They’re all like, ‘Yo, what’s on the internet, that’s what’s for real.’ Come on. We’re too smart for that. We’ve been playing this game for such a long time and that’s one of the reasons we’ve been dominating for such a long time, because we’re trying to outsmart everybody. So it’s definitely not a thing we would be posting. We were just having fun.
“Tom had to stay in shape and ready for either potentially fighting either Stipe or Jon at (UFC 309). So we were just having fun and imitating Jon a little bit, going left to right and moving around. That’s what we were doing. It’s not a true something you can analyze like, ‘He wasn’t looking that good vs. Rico.’ Because believe me. Tom is an amazing kickboxer. He would give definitely give the top three in GLORY their hands full in a fight. Every time he comes we talk and he’s such an amazing listener and he’s a learner. Every time I give him stuff, he comes back and he masters the trick I told him. I love it.”
Verhoeven said he ultimately knows the truth of what happens between Aspinall and himself when they are going at full speed and the camera aren’t running. It gives him extreme confidence that Aspinall would be the one to hand Jones his first true defeat in MMA competition, but it remains to be seen if the UFC can finalize the fight.
As goofy as Verhoeven thinks it is for anyone to look at his public sparring videos with Aspinall as having any substantial value, he doesn’t mind as long as it leads to the Jones fight coming to fruition.
“He has to take that fight,” Verhoeven said. “I understand his position. I understand why he’s not really eager to take that fight, because Tom’s a different type of animal. He’s a different type of monster. He’s fast. He’s agile. He can grapple. He can wrestle. He’s good on the ground. He can box. He can kick box. So I don’t think Jon wants a piece of Tom Aspinall.”
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