Dana White recently decreed that the days of teammates refusing to fight each other are “over,” comments that came after another tit for tat with Jon Fitch, who continues to annoy the UFC boss man by refusing to fight AKA training partner Josh Koscheck. This is a doozy of an issue; no question. Some fighters aren’t able to distance themselves emotionally from inflicting bodily harm on their buddy, while from a fan’s perspective (which at the end of the day puts dolla, dolla bills in the virtual wallets of Zuffa and the fighters) if teammates never fight, some pretty sweet bouts will never happen.
One of the latest fighters to weigh in on this issue is Jon “Bones” Jones, who while speaking on MMA Scraps Radio (thanks to MMA Bay for the quote), had this to say about possibly fighting his teammate, Rashad Evans.
“I guess I would for a million dollars. We spar together every day so I mean for a million dollars I guess we could put the 4-ounces on. Friendship is way more valuable than the money… These guys have opened my eyes up how to train as a pro-athlete and so it would just be wrong to use all that against them.”
Interesting way of looking at it. Friendship is more important than money, but, not if it’s a million dollars or…? No we get it; there’s a valid point here, if you are going to endanger your friend’s health, it better be a situation where you can at least buy him a brand new ride after.