At his peak, there was no heavyweight on the planet quite like Cain Velasquez. 

Throughout his heyday between his debut in 2006 and his heavyweight title defeat to Fabricio Werdum in the summer of 2015, a succession of heavyweights were felled by Velasquez’s relentless pace and dominant, walk-forward style of aggressive wrestling.

The latter part of Velasquez’s career was waylaid due to a series of injuries which restricted his time in the cage, potentially robbing fight fans of what might have been some of the best heavyweight scraps in history — but how would a prime Velasquez fare against this era’s heavyweight pacesetters in Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall? Quite well, he believes.

“Jon Jones vs. Prime Cain? OK that would be a tough fight man, always, that would’ve been tough,” Velasquez told the Basement Talk podcast of that hypothetical fight, via Bloody Elbow.

“You know what with that dude, he’s the boogeyman but I think that I would’ve been the best matchup because I think I would’ve had something for him. I could go there where he would’ve wanted to go,” he added of the fighter who faced Velasquez’s close friend and training partner Daniel Cormier on two occasions.

As for the man who currently holds the interim UFC title Tom Aspinall, Velasquez doubted that the Englishman would have had an answer for his grappling.

“Aspinall as well, especially with the wrestling, I just know when I get onto somebody’s legs I’m taking him down,” Velasquez explained.

“[Aspinall is] very dangerous with his hands, has a lot of power, what he does, he kind of lunges forward and punches, takes a big step and lunges forward, closes distance really well. But with that, it’s like, when someone is wrestling it’s like, OK you’re gonna be coming into my takedowns.”

Velasquez retired from mixed martial arts following a loss to Francis Ngannou in February 2019.