RETIRED! Jon Jones may one day regret choosing to walk away from Tom Aspinall bout

Jon Jones didn’t simply dominate mixed martial arts; he defined it.

Love him or loathe him — and there is plenty of reason for both — there’s one truth that stands above the noise:Jon Jones is the greatest fighter in the history of this sport.

Period. End of story.

Guys came out of fights with him looking like they’d driven a Ferrari into a wall at 105 mph.

Fedor Emelianenko turned on an entire generation to the sport in its first 15 years, but he’s not the greatest of all-time.

Georges St-Pierre won belts at welterweight and middleweight, and is one of the sport’s most loved figures, but he can’t match Jones, either.

Nor can Khabib Nurmagomedov, Anderson Silva, Demetrious Johnson or anyone else you’d care to name.

Jones stands alone, the Michael Jordan of MMA, the Tom Brady of the Octagon.

And yet, for all his greatness, Jones always left us wanting more: More brilliance, more challenges, more closure.

This is the guy who was arrested on the night he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. He became the first UFC champion to be stripped of his title twice.

He made as much news for his wild personal life as for his brilliance in the cage. Among the lowlights: He once wrapped his Bentley around a light pole, and in another incident, he t-boned a car driven by a pregnant woman and fled the scene.

Those incidents painted him in an unflattering light, and made many wonder how good he’d have been had he actually taken his job seriously and avoided the nightlife.

But they’re not what will set him apart in the sport’s history.

As phenomenal as he was as a fighter, he’s going to be remembered most for what he didn’t do.

He didn’t fight Tom Aspinall — by far his greatest challenge.

It’s no stunner, then, that Jones’ retirement wasn’t announced at a lavish news conference in Las Vegas, where he scored so many of his greatest wins, but following a Fight Night card in Baku, Azerbaijan, where UFC CEO Dana White casually dropped the news in response to a question.

“Jon Jones called us last night and retired,” White said at the UFC Baku post-fight news conference. “Jon Jones is officially retired. Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion of the UFC.”

At one point, it appeared fans would never forget that day in 2011 when he became the UFC’s youngest champion. He stopped a mugging in progress during the day, then mugged the legendary Shogun Rua during the fight to lift the light heavyweight title from the great Brazilian.

Are we going to remember the 6-foot-4 guy who once choked Lyoto Machida unconscious while standing, then allowed Machida to collapse with a thud onto the floor when he released the hold, or are we going to remember him for walking away from his greatest challenge?

Jones’ two epic victories over the great Daniel Cormier (one later changed to a no-contest) are worthy of a Hall of Fame plaque, but I get the sense that’s not how Jones will be viewed, at least not in the short term.

It felt like a yearlong wild goose chase.

He took on Stipe Miocic, a once-great but seriously declining 42-year-old, at UFC 309 in November rather than Aspinall, a dominant champion with an exciting style and the interim belt.

Jones owes no one a thing, not the fans, not Aspinall, not the UFC and certainly not the media.

If he doesn’t want to fight, then he shouldn’t fight. 

James Toney, the legendary Hall of Fame boxing champion, once said you play golf but you don’t play boxing. And it’s even more true of MMA, where the danger doesn’t stop with fists — it comes from elbows, knees and kicks, too.

If he’s not into it, then walking away is the right call. He hasn’t seemed into it for a long time, yet strung everyone along hoping they’d one day awaken to the news that he’d soon be meeting Aspinall.

When there is a great heavyweight fight, it always transcends the sport, and Jones versus Aspinall had the ability to be the highest-grossing fight in the history of the sport.

Jones has withstood the test of time, while Aspinall has not, but Aspinall’s style was so perfectly suited to Jones’ that it was legitimate to wonder if this 6-5 curly-headed Mancunian was the guy to take him down.

Jones’ wrestling was his calling card, but he had more variety of strikes than Heinz has varieties of ketchup.

Aspinall can’t wrestle like Jones, but he’s comfortable on the ground and has trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu since he was five. 

It would have been great theater and big money, too.

Jones, though, for reasons known only to himself, chose to walk away.

He’s beaten a litany of legendary fighters — Cormier, Miocic, Rua, Rashad Evans, Glover Teixeira, Machida, Alexander Gustafsson and Vitor Belfort among — and in most cases made it look like child’s play.

He won many of those fights while barely training and partying it up during camp.

But he made a decision I suspect will haunt him.

He chose to walk away rather than fight Tom Aspinall.

People will remember that as much or more as they do his submissions, his TKOs and his numerous scrapes with the law.

He was the storm no one could outrun, the chaos with a crown.

But legends aren’t made by the wars they avoid. And so the specter of Tom Aspinall will follow Jon Jones like a shadow he can’t choke out, a final round he chose never to enter.

He leaves as the sport’s unquestioned GOAT.

But he also leaves with the question still hanging in the air.

What if?