Gilbert Burns believes Jon Jones is making a mistake with his move up to heavyweight.
Jones is expected to make his heavyweight debut later this year with the UFC planning on him facing the winner of the Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou rematch which is slated for March.
Burns notably believes Ngannou will emerge victorious over Miocic which would set up a highly-anticipated meeting with Jones. However, the Brazilian doesn’t seem to think Jones stands a chance against “The Predator” as he wonders how the longtime light heavyweight champion would deal with the effects of a potential knockout defeat.
“Jon Jones at heavyweight — me? I don’t like that so much,” Burns said on his YouTube channel (via 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.”
Even counting Ngannou aside, the UFC welterweight believes there are plenty of other bad matchups in the division for Jones.
Curtis Blaydes and Alistair Overeem being among them.
“I don’t know if it’s just me but there’s a lot of bad matchups for him,” Burns added. “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.”
Of course, comments like these will only spur Jones to prove his critics wrong even more. And if the light heavyweights didn’t scare him, heavyweights like Ngannou certainly will which will undoubtedly bring out the best of Jones.
Do you agree with Burns?