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The ongoing feud between current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, and middleweight king, Israel Adesanya, hasn’t slowed down one bit.
Out with the old, in the the new, I suppose.
Still, it seems the back-and-forth is all for naught, as the promotion isn’t interested in the super fight at the moment, seeing as how Adesanya has yet to defend his title, while Jones has pretty much cleaned out his division.
And while “The Last Stylebender” has embedded it in everyone’s mind that he won’t fight Jones until 2021, there is a way to make the fight happen tomorrow.
“Jon Jones, man. See, this is my new belt at 185. I’m the champ at that weight class. I have plans to clean out the division like he has done in his division, but he hasn’t moved up in weight,” explained Israel during a recent sit-down on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show.
“I’ve done it in boxing, kickboxing and I will do it in MMA eventually, but I want to clean out my division. If he wants to fight me right now, come see me at 185. Since he is the champ at his weight class, I will let him jump the queue. But let me do my work. And I already said 2021.”
Furthermore, Adesanya is convinced Jones is only calling for the fight now in order to get him before he reaches his prime, much like Floyd Mayweather Jr. did to Canelo Alvarez in 2013.
“He’s smart man. You see Canelo now, you saw what he did to Kovalev. People are like, ‘He’s the new pound-for-pound.’ Ya’ll must have forgot, do ya’ll remember the Mayweather fight? Mayweather did what Jon Jones is trying to do to me, which is to show his hands early, fight him when he is still young and fresh,” he added.
“So his coaches will see the growth and they see me fight after fight after fight and they see I’m getting better every time. If we got to beat him we got to beat him yesterday.”
According to Israel, Jones simply doesn’t like to see a freshman coming in taking all the shine from the dominate senior. That said, Adesanya echoed his coaches sentiment that he is more keen on fighting men who have a clean slate and “beautiful” soul on the inside, like Jared Cannonier, for example.
That was enough to prompt a response from “Bones.”
“Geez now I’m not beautiful enough!? Starting to sound like your coach. I’ll let you do your work, just keep my name out of your mouth in the meanwhile. See you in 2021, I guess,” he responded on Instagram.
At the end of the day, Jones — who eyes heavyweight — making the 185-pound weight limit doesn’t seem like easiest of things to do.