In an interview on Pro MMA Radio, former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans took to the airwaves again during a regular segment on PMR.
Evans fielded a lot of questions concerning Team Jackson fighter Jon “Bones” Jones, who is set to meet champ Mauricio “Shogun” Rua this Saturday for his UFC title at UFC 128.
Here are some of the excerpts from that interview transcribed by Masakatsu Funaki on the Underground Forums.
– Rashad talked with Jones after the interview he gave where Jones said that he would fight him. Rashad was very surprised. Jones had never expressed this. The interview was pretaped and Rashad never received a call or text alerting him to it. His reaction on ESPN was one of surprise when he said “I’m not a punk; if he says he’ll fight me, I’ll fight him.”
– Rashad was asked about Jones’ frustrated comments on the media conference call where Jones first said he wouldn’t be taking Rashad into the cage with him though he was his friend and went on to say: “I have a lot of people outside of Rashad who I can draw energy and power from and they’ll all be with me.”
– “That does sound a little bit cold-blooded”, Rashad replied after hearing the above quote. “Jon’s a young guy and when you’re a young guy sometimes you talk a little too fast for your brain to keep up…I don’t think it’s acceptable at all. I don’t think it’s something I’d say.”
– Next, this Jones quote was brought up by Pepe: “I absolutely hate when people mention Rashad Evans, especially throughout this training camp….for people to even be mentioning Rashad Evans right now…I think it’s ludicrous. Rashad is not in my mind, he’s not in my being, he has absolutely zero to do with my heart and who I am right now. This guy has nothing to do with Shogun and from here on out, I don’t think I’ll answer a question about Rashad.”
– Rashad replied with “it sounds like he wants to fight, huh? Those sound like fighting words”. He went on to say, “Ya know, I don’t know how to judge the kid. It’s kinda messed up, to be honest. Ya know, I can’t control what anyone else says and it sounds to me like he’s a little bit insecure about the whole thing. Sometimes when you open your mouth you show what you’re afraid of more than anything. I don’t know why he has such an adverse response like that to me. I’ve never challenged him or made him feel like he should do that sort of thing. It sounds to me — if I was out of the situation — that he was feeling insecure about me [not Shogun responding to Pepe’s point].”
– Rashad says that he’s been working a lot with Trevor Wittman over the last few camps. Trevor is his guy and he’s been spending time with him including the last 2 camps. By the way Rashad is talking, it seems like he doesn’t have a problem fighting his training partners; that he agrees with Trevor. It sounds like Rashad had enough respect for Greg Jackson’s agreement to not fight his training partners that he went along with Jackson’s law. Now that the school has grown and Jones has said he would fight Evans and Jackson has not intervened and restated his mandate that Jones never fight any training partners, things may be different.