LOS ANGELES — The way Phil Davis sees it, UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones wants no part of the toughest competition in his weight class anymore.
“He wants more of the softer side of the division,” Davis said Friday.
Or, at the very least, Davis doesn’t think Jones wants to rematch Davis’ training partner, Alexander Gustafsson, any time soon, after their UFC 165 barnburner.
“Most people would rematch,” Davis said of the Toronto title fight narrowly won by Jones in September. “But he said, forget about that, forget about you.’ I find that interesting. Very interesting.”
Davis meets Anthony Johnson in a featured bout at UFC 172 in Baltimore next month, a fight which will be underneath Jones’ title defense against Glover Teixeira.
Listen to the Alliance MMA competitor, though, and he’s not sure Jones wants a part of Teixeira, either.
“Glover’s a big, scary guy,” said Davis (12-1). “And he swings hard, and that doesn’t make for happy afternoons. So, that’s a tough fight for him. He’s not ready for it.”
If Davis seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the way things have panned out in the light heavyweight division, it could be because he’s not getting fights which match his resume. In his last fight, Davis defeated former champion Lyoto Machida, who then dropped down to middleweight.
Machida joined a list of fighters who have either dropped to middleweight after losing to Davis, or gotten big fights at light heavyweight after losing to him.
“Alex. Machida, Li’l Nog, Brian Stann, Tim Boetsch, all those guys, they’ve done good for themselves,” he said. “I’m their good luck charm or something.”
Davis isn’t going to pretend Johnson, a former UFC competitor who took his last several bouts in World Series of Fighting and is making his return, was his first choice of opponents.
“He’s not the guy I wanted,” Davis said. “But pretty much everyone else was booked, so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was like, I’ll take it at this point.”
Quite simply, Davis has stopped attempting to make sense of the divisional scheme of things, noting that Daniel Cormier feels he deserves a title shot, and that Teixeira got one without beating a major contender.
“I mean listen, it can be any combination of title things that get you a title shot,” Davis said. “Apparently fighting Roy Nelson and then fighting Pat Cummins gets you a title shot. Maybe beating no one in the top 10 like Glover did gets you a title shot. There’s no rhyme or reason to getting a title shot. So, beating the number one contender does not get you a title shot. At this point, I don’t really care, I think I’m in the best in the world so I’ll just keep fighting whoever they put in the cage.”
And who knows? If either Jones or Teixeira have to drop out at UFC 172, maybe Davis will get his shot after all.
“Bless his heart, [Jones is] still in there,” Davis said. “If not, I’ll be fighting Glover for the interim title.”