Jon Jones has a huge title fight ahead of him on July 6, 2019, as he is lined up to defend his Light Heavyweight title against Thiago Santos at UFC 239 in Las Vegas, Nevada (staredown here). Naturally, though, anytime “Bones” has a fight coming up, looking ahead to opponents down the road will be brought up.
That was the case during his chat on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show, as Jon was asked to clarify the root of his new beef with current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) interim Middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya.
According to Jon, he doesn’t have anything personal against “The Last Stylebender,” which is why he doesn’t understand why the young champion felt the need to mention in in his callouts.
“I really don’t (said anything bad). I think the worse thing I’ve ever said about him is that he looked really promising and I would assume that people would be entertaining that fight soon and he’d come up to challenge me,” said Jones. “That’s all I said about him. I think he said about killing on G.O.A.T in Anderson Silva, and now trying to kill me or some shit.”
Though he feels the beef is unwarranted, Jones won’t sit by and simply let someone bad-mouth him, which is why he felt the need to respond to Israel. As far as the differences in beating Anderson Silva and himself, Jon says he’s still getting better, and not on his way out.
Plus, if Israel wants to step to him, he will have to put on some weight, first.
“The biggest difference is that I am 31 and still reaching my prime. If you look back through a lot of my fights, you hear guys who have fought me say, Jon is a lot stronger than he looks. And Israel is light in the ass,” explained Jones. “He’s light. He’s skinny. I’ll put my hands on him and teach him a whole different world of hurt. For him to be so frail and not have a ground game, it’s like bro, you don’t want to do it.”
“And then to talk about my standup against Anthony Smith with his face all bubbled up by a short wrestler that did that to him. It’s just hilarious. I barely get touched in my fight. For Israel to talk about his striking skills being further from mine, it’s hilarious. He’s light in the ass. He needs to eat more jerk chicken and come holler at me.”
Indeed, while Adesanya does eye a fight against Jones, it won’t be in the near future, saying Jones’ time will come when he is good and ready. Of course, Jon has his own translation as to what that means.
“You want me to tell you what that means? ‘I am a bitch and I can’t beat Jon.’ Him fighting me when he is ready to really beat me, dude don’t open your mouth if you feel can’t beat me now. As if my skills are stagnant and I’m not improving myself. It’s silly. What he said is, and he just worded it the way he wanted, ‘I can’t beat Jon.’ Anything he said outside of that doesn’t matter.”
While a fight between the two talented men would be a feast for the eyes, it will be a long time from now before it’s even in discussion, as Adesanya still has his work for him at Middleweight, including a title unification match against division king Robert Whittaker later this year.