The hype train for next month’s monstrous fight between UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones and former training partner and friend Rashad Evans is in full swing.
In the coming weeks, we’ll start seeing plenty of interviews from both fighters as they prepare for their showdown in Atlanta.
We’ll get the usual UFC Countdown preview show, and we’ll also see a three-week “UFC Primetime” series, beginning April 6.
With nearly two months between UFC pay per view events, the hype level for this one should be off the charts by the time fight week rolls around.
Evans is doing a series of exclusive blog entries for Yahoo, and his first one is a doozy:
At UFC 145, I think it will come down to who really wants it. We are both going to get beat on in this fight, we are both going to get banged up and hurt, but I want this more.
On April 21, at UFC 145, beating Jon Jones up means everything to me. I want to smash him up so bad. I want to be world champion again – but for this fight, beating up on Jon Jones means absolutely everything.
I will beat his ass and then tell him that crying won’t get him his belt back.
Do you believe Evans when he says that beating Jones is more important to him than winning the title?
I do.
This thing between Jones and Evans is very personal. Evans was a senior member at Greg Jackson’s gym in New Mexico, and he feels like he was cast aside by his former coach and friends for the next big thing in Jones.
He was forced to make major life changes, on the personal side and in terms of training. It wasn’t an easy experience.
Evans may never say it publicly, but I believe he was hurt deeply by the way the whole situation unfolded.
We’ll never know the true extent of the former relationship between Evans and Jones, and we may never know exactly how Jones came to be a part of Jackson’s gym in the first place.
At this point, it doesn’t really matter. In Rashad’s mind, the damage is done.
I do believe that beating Jones means more to Evans than winning the title for a second time.
At this point, it’s less about disarming the cocky kid than it is about sending Jackson a message: that he was wrong to stand behind Jones.
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