Nina-Marie Daniele defends Jon Jones for walking out of interview due to Tom Aspinall ties: "Way of protecting their energy" 

Nina-Marie Dainele voiced her support for Jon Jones after the latter recently quit one of his scheduled interviews before it even started. Jones walked away after learning of the interviewer's ties to Tom Aspinall.

Jones talked about Aspinall in two of his previous interviews with Kevin Iole and ESPN MMA but this time didn't want to answer any more questions about him. He walked into the TNT Sports studio and greeted the interviewer, Adam Catterall, pretty sportingly.

But just before sitting down for the interview, he rolled his eyes over the questions' script, which made him realize that most questions were going to be about Aspinall. Jones quit the interview right after this.

However, Daniele didn't find anything unusual with Jones choosing to exit his TNT Sports interview:

"This happens on every fight card but most of you don’t know because the cameras are not always on. I’ve seen it happen to media many times. I’ve had UFC fighters decline my interviews because I’m friends with Sean Strickland or Alex Pereira and think I might be biased. This is nothing new and I have never taken it personally and I don’t think the guys at TNT took it personally.

"Put yourself in the fighters' shoes. You are getting ready to fight another human in front of millions of people and declining an interview is just a way of protecting their energy, especially if they’re talking about someone you’re not even fighting at the moment."

The Jones-Aspinall feud began after the English heavyweight claimed the interim UFC gold against Serghei Pavlovich at UFC 295. Since then, Aspinall has challenged Jones several times for a title unification bout, but Jones has been turning a deaf ear. He has also justified his negligence, saying that Aspinall is not a part of the legacy he wants to create.

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Tom Aspinall confused about what he needs to do to get his callout accepted by Jon Jones

Jon Jones said that Aspinall needs to get victories over more noteworthy names or former champions to be a worthy rival for him.

But Aspinall found Jones' reasoning 'confusing.' In a recent interview with Mainevent while running around Central Park, Aspinall mentioned that he wanted to fight the champion of his weight class, but he couldn't do so without Jones' acceptance:

"I don't know what he wants me to do. He wants me to fight more champions. And I'm like, 'Bro, you are the champion, and you won't fight me.' So what am I supposed to do? I have no options. So, they're going to say anything to not fight me, basically. He's trying to sway the opinions of the public to make it seem like it makes sense. He's a smart guy and there will be people who believe that."

Check out Tom Aspinall's comments below (04:34):