It was just over a month ago that UFC interim light heavyweight champion Jon Jones was forced out of his UFC 200 main event against his hated rival Daniel Cormier, when he was flagged for violating the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) anti-doping policy.
The winner of the contest between Cormier and Jones was expected to take on the winner of the upcoming 205-pound contest between Glover Teixeira and Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson at UFC 202 this weekend (August 20, 2016).
During a recent interview with FOX Sports, Johnson reminisced on how he found out of Jones’ pulling from the massive card:
“Honestly, I was flying to Vegas whenever it happened. I got a group on What’s App with me and my friends and we were communicating with each other and had WIFI on the plane and all of a sudden my phone started getting all these notifications from Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all this other stuff. I’m like what the hell is going on?” Johnson said.
“First thing I saw was ‘Jon Jones pulled from UFC 200 for anti-doping violation’.
I was you’ve got to be kidding me right now. Honestly, I was shocked. I was hoping this wasn’t true. Like this is bad. At the same time, I was like why would he do something that stupid? Knowing that you have a target on your back like that.
Nobody knows his story. I asked the same questions to myself that everybody else asked, why would you even do that to yourself? Why would you put yourself in that situation. I was just shocked,” Johnson said.
“It was crazy. Before I even landed in Vegas, my phone was going crazy. I was shocked, the world was shocked, everyone was shocked.
A lot of people were saying they weren’t surprised but yeah you were. You didn’t see this coming. Nobody saw this coming. So it was just crazy. It was something that threw everybody for a loop.”
One of the most highly-anticipated fights that could have been made in the light heavyweight division was a throw-down between ‘Rumble’ and ‘Bones’, but that all seemed to go down the drain with Jones’ potential two-year suspension looming:
“You know how it is. All the great fights happen when you least expect it, all the great things in life happen when you least expect it,” Johnson said.
“Every time somebody is pumped up and everybody’s ready for it and excited about it, it’s not what it turns out to be. It’s just like (Manny) Pacquiao and (Floyd) Mayweather — everybody’s like ‘oh I’m pumped up for this fight’ and when you saw the fight, you’re like this is garbage, I want my money back.”
“Am I disappointed I didn’t get to fight Jon? Yeah, because I wanted to fight the best in the world. The best of the best. I’m doing that but at the end of the day, Jon was and is to me, still the man,” Johnson said.
“He’s that guy because he didn’t lose the title due to fighting. He lost it because of his actions outside of fighting. It is what it is.
“I have another great opponent in front of me in Glover (Teixeira) and I also have Daniel Cormier in front of me. Everything keeps going. We’re still going to make the best of this division and have fun and make history.”
Johnson and Teixeira will meet in the co-main event of UFC 202 live on pay-per-view (PPV), from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 20, 2016.
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