Georges St-Pierre has advised Jon Jones to remain patient.
Former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre has advised Jon Jones to remain patient in ongoing negotiations with the UFC, claiming that ‘Bones’ deserves to fight Francis Ngannou for the heavyweight title.
Jones vacated the light heavyweight title last year when he announced that he would be moving up to the heavyweight division, but UFC president Dana White is adamant ‘Bones’ will never compete at heavyweight and that Derrick Lewis is next in line to fight Ngannou for the title.
St-Pierre, however, feels it makes more sense for Jones to fight Ngannou and that the former light heavyweight champ should sit out and wait for his title shot.
“I think Jon should fight the champion, not Stipe,” GSP said on Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast (h/t MMA Fighting). “I think he should fight Francis Ngannou, the champion. I believe, if I’m Jon Jones – when we talk about this, we talk about it like a chess game because these are big important decisions that you make. Fighting, there’s always a question. Because you think you beat one guy doesn’t mean that even if the odds favor you, doesn’t mean you’re always gonna win. I think it would be a mistake for Jon Jones to fight Stipe.”
If Jones did fight Stipe Miocic instead, which St-Pierre believes would be a huge mistake, ‘Rush’ is confident Jones would come out on top.
“I believe Jon Jones will beat Stipe, however, why take the risk of fighting Stipe when you can wait and fight the champion, if you can, and collect two belts,” St-Pierre said. “Then after, Jon Jones the greatest of all time, if he does that he can run off into the sunset. His stock will be as high as – more higher than anybody ever. Another world will open for him as he retires. He can do whatever he wants. The problem is, guys hang there in the sport for too long. They are considered the best but they hang there too long so now their stock goes down and they retire as their stock are down so when they retire, the door does not open for them because they already broke. Their stock is bad. So that’s why you should retire on top.”
Jones recently hired Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer as his new advisor, but White still isn’t convinced the JacksonWink product wants to compete at heavyweight. Jones is currently enjoying some downtime after a ‘decade of wins’ at the top and claims his next fight will be huge no matter who it’s against.