Well this is certainly a new one.
It would appear that the camp of UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones, Greg Jackson’s MMA, may have a spy amongst the ranks of upcoming opponent, Rampage Jackson’s camp.
Rampage Jackson talked to Yahoo! Sports on Monday, and accused Jones’ camp of spying on him.
At some point last week, Rampage made up a story about having a hand injury, and no more than four hours later, his manager received a call from UFC matchmaker, Joe Silva, to find out what happened.
Rampage’s manager, Anthony McGann, assured Joe Silva that everything was fine, and then asked Silva where he got the information.
Guess where.
From Jon Jones’ manager, Malki Kawa.
In the interview with Yahoo! Sports, Rampage said
“One of my friends was talking to Jon Jones’ manager recently, and Jon Jones’ manager was saying that he knows everything that is going on in our camp, he said he had spies in our camp and he knew everything that was going on. That got me thinking. How did he know about my hand injury that fast? It wasn’t on the Internet, and yet he knew about my hand injury right away. The UFC people were in Brazil, which is why it probably took them four hours to call me. That shows me two things: They have spies in my camp, one, and two, they’re dumb as hell, because they didn’t know how to use the information correctly and to wait. He called right away, running to Joe Silva. Joe Silva called my manager right away.”
Jackson went on to say that he doesn’t care what Jon Jones is doing, and that he still has “the honor of a fighter.”
Kawa responded to the allegations soon after, defending himself saying he saw a report on Twitter, and adding,
“I promise to God, I have no spy in that camp, it’s completely and totally untrue. There is nothing to it at all. It’s funny he said that, though, because we’ve heard he has had old training partners of Jon coming in to work with him. We don’t care and it’s kind of hilarious he’s doing this. But I can guarantee you there is nothing at all that is true about this other than that I called Joe Silva after someone put out a thing on Twitter that Rampage was injured and pulling out. I wanted to know what was up, but it was no more than that. That is it.”
Jackson first became suspicious of a spy back in May of 2010, when he was preparing for a No. 1 contender fight with Rashad Evans.
Jackson said he suffered a knee injury that nobody knew about, and when he got in the cage, he found himself being punched in the knee for the first time in his 38 fight career.
After the fight was over, Evans said
“I never heard a thing about it, I heard him talk about it after the fight. I didn’t know about it going into the fight. When I had him against the cage, I kept hitting him in the knee because of how he was reacting, not because anybody told me anything prior.
That still didn’t convince Rampage, and this probably didn’t help.
One day in camp, Rampage was working elbows, and the next day, Jones tweeted that he had to start working elbows.
It could be a coincidence, but Rampage doesn’t think so.
Rampage also said he believes he knows who the leak is, but he would not publicly release the name, and will not release the name even if it is confirmed.
So what do you think? Is Rampage crazy, or is Jon Jones not the golden boy that everyone pegged him as?
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