Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier was postponed from September to January after the UFC light heavyweight champion suffered a torn meniscus in his knee and an ankle injury in training, and Dana White thinks Greg Jackson could be the cause for that.
Jackson, who is Jones’ head coach in Albuquerque, admitted that UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem caused Jones’ injuries, forcing the title bout to be moved to Jan. 3. White doesn’t understand why the light heavyweight champion was training with Overeem for a fight with Cormier in the first place.
“It drives me crazy,” White told The Jim Rome Show. “First of all he’s fighting a 5’ 10” unbelievable wrestler – that’s who he is facing in Daniel Cormier. (But) he’s training with 6’ 10″ no-wrestling, all-standup kickboxer Alistair Overeem. And Alistair Overeem lands on his leg and busts his knee up and gives him a high ankle sprain.
“I mean I just don’t know why he would be training with Alistair Overeem for a fight when he’s going to fight a 5’ 10″ wrestler. I don’t know, it’s frustrating.”
White thought about contacting the coach when he heard about Jones training with Overeem for UFC 178, but never made the call.
“Greg Jackson and I had many issues in the past,” he said. “I wanted to pick the phone up about twenty times and call him and say ‘What are you doing? Why’s he training with Alistair Overeem to fight Daniel Cormier? Please tell me how that makes sense?’ But I didn’t. I bit my tongue, until right this second.”
White expects both Jones and Cormier to continue their war of words until January, and he guarantees we haven’t seen the worst things they said to each other.
“I think that both Jones and Cormier have done a good job at the mental warfare,” he said. “Cormier was telling ‘I’m going to do this to you, I’m going to do that to you.’ And every time they do these media tours, someone stayed on and leaked it out to the press and said ‘oh my God, listen to what they are saying to each other, this is horrible.’”
“I heard more of that, and I’ve heard they say worse,” he added. “So the mental war game with these has been going for a long time, and they are both doing pretty well at it.”