Tom Aspinall thinks Jon Jones is playing hard to get.

This past weekend, Jones successfully defended his heavyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Stipe Miocic at UFC 309. The win should set up a title unification bout between Jones and Aspinall, but for the fact that Jones stated outright that he’s not interested in the matchup. Instead, Jones’s future is unclear at the moment, but if the fight does eventually take place, Aspinall has words of warning for Jones.

“I think the main thing we can take away is me right now at 31 years old, and Stipe right now at 42 years old, coming off a big layoff, are not even in the same stratosphere,” Aspinall told Ariel Helwani. “That’s what I can say about it, and that’s no disrespect to anybody. But that’s the truth of it. We are not even in the same stratosphere right now. And Stipe is one of the greatest of all time, the best heavyweight of all time. But talking about right now? No where near close. ...

“I ain’t 42-year-old Stipe, and Jon knows it. Jon’s a lot smarter than a lot of you people think, and Jon knows exactly what he’s up against.”

In lieu of fighting Aspinall, Jones is already lobbying for a matchup with light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira, even suggesting he might vacate the heavyweight title to do so. However, UFC CEO Dana White openly rejected that idea following UFC 309 and instead seems focused on the Aspinall matchup. The interim champion even spoke with UFC officials over the weekend saying he felt “very, very positive” about the chance of the bout happening, in part because Aspinall believes Jones is simply playing hard to get.

“I think he secretly wants it. Because he has a gigantic ego. And he should have! He’s one of the best fighters ever and he hates the fact, hates the fact, that people are saying I can beat him. He can’t sleep at night. He does all this stuff and he keeps mentioning it over and over again, that he doesn’t care about me, he thinks he’s above me, and all that. Because this is all projecting. It’s all projecting. All of it. He knows, deep down he knows, he just has to keep saying it because he’s got to defend himself.”

“Jon is a competitor,” Aspinall added later. “He’s a ruthless competitor. You can see it. ... I can see the way it eats him up. Just from even watching — I don’t sit and watch the interviews, but I see clips here and there, and my existence hurts his feelings. A lot.

“On the contrary to what he says, I ain’t never been an asshole to him. We’ve got a bit of banter with this duck thing going. Oh that’s so offensive! ... Come on Jon, stop being so sensitive. He’s offended that somewhere deep in his mind and deep in his soul, he knows I can bounce his head off the canvas. He knows it.”

And should the fight come to pass, Aspinall believes he has one major advantage over one of the greatest fighters of all time.

“One of Jon Jones’s biggest advantages that he has over everybody ... is that he’s a tape studier,” Aspinall said. “... He loves to study opponents like this. He has no chance of doing that with me because my average fight time is shortest in the UFC at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, over 10 fights. That’s something that keeps him up at night, that will keep him up at night, for sure. I’m a massive, massive question mark for him. And I know a lot of his game. He’s got a lot of octagon time over a lot of years. I’ve got next to nothing, next to no footage of me is out there of me doing anything apart from bouncing people’s heads off the canvas. He has no idea what to prepare for and that is fantastic for me.”