“Jon Jones at heavyweight — me? I don’t like that so much”.
Jon Jones will make his long awaited move up to heavyweight in 2021 when he takes on the winner of the proposed championship rematch between Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou, but Gilbert Burns thinks it could end badly for the former UFC light heavyweight champion.
Burns believes Ngannou will avenge his loss to Miocic and, if matched up against Jones, is confident ‘The Predator’ will go on to KO ‘Bones’ too.
Such a result would be disastrous for Jones’ career, Burns says, and claims the UFC veteran would be better suited at light heavyweight against either Israel Adesanya on Jan Blachowicz.
“Jon Jones at heavyweight — me? I don’t like that so much,” Burns said on his YouTube channel (h/t Abhinav Kini of Middle Easy). “When you have a guy like Francis Ngannou in the heavyweight division, I don’t know. I don’t see an easy path for Jon Jones in the heavyweight division. Or he has to fight Stipe if he Stipe beats Ngannou, Stipe is fighting Jon Jones. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think Ngannou is going to defeat Stipe and Ngannou will fight Jon Jones. And I don’t like that fight.
“… I don’t like the what if but what if Jon Jones goes against Francis Ngannou and he’s [Ngannou] going to knock him out badly. How about that? What is Jon Jones going to do? First, when you’re undefeated and you lose, it’s very tough. … If you’re champion, champion, undefeated, undisputed and then you lose badly, I don’t know how that’s going to affect you right here [pointing to the head]. I don’t know about Jon Jones’ future. I think he still has a couple of guys to beat at 205. My opinion — he should fight Adesanya. Stay at 205, beat Jan Blachowicz, beat Santos again, another guy.”
Burns also doesn’t like Jones’ chances against the likes of Alistair Overeem or Curtis Blaydes, and thinks the JacksonWink standout should reconsider his options at light heavyweight.
“I don’t know if it’s just me but there’s a lot of bad matchups for him,” Burns said. “Curtis Blaydes is a wrestler, good striker, hits very, very hard. Then we got Alistair Overeem, they used to train together and Overeem called him out. What does that mean? If the guy called you out and you used to train together, that’s a little confidence at least.
“Overeem, Curtis Blaydes, Francis Ngannou? I don’t know. I got to see it to believe it. But I don’t think it’s a good move for Jon Jones to go up to heavyweight as of right now.”
Jones, who vacated his light heavyweight title in 2020, is expected to make his heavyweight debut sometime later this year.