“I think he should do whatever he wants to do, but don’t go around talking crap about Jon”.
Tyron Woodley thinks reigning UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya needs to wind his neck in a little.
Adesanya has been taunting Jon Jones for the longest time but only moved up in weight when ‘Bones’ decided to vacate the light heavyweight title.
Woodley can’t understand why Adesanya, who said he wanted to clear out the middleweight division before fighting Jones, moved up to 205 pounds almost immediately after the latter moved up to heavyweight.
“I thought he had some business to do in the middleweight division and he was going to wait, and the second Jon Jones moved up to heavyweight, he moved up to 205,” Woodley told MMA Junkie’s Farah Hannoun in a recent interview.
“I couldn’t even think past the fact that he completely said he was not going to go up to 205 and face Jon Jones. If you’re the best – if somebody asked me to go up and fight (Michael) Bisping, I’m doing it. If you want to say you’re the best, now you’re going to go up to fight Jan? You wouldn’t do it to fight Jon? That makes no sense. The pay day is way different, and when someone talks and says they’re this and that, and then they get the opportunity to go against the greatest of all time and you wanted to wait two years? I don’t get it.”
Woodley isn’t hating on Adesanya for fighting Jan Blachowicz instead of Jones but thinks ‘The Last Stylebender’ should keep Jones’ name out of his mouth in future.
“I think he should do whatever he wants to do, but don’t go around talking crap about Jon, and to Jon, and now Jon said, ‘All right, let’s go,’ and now you’re like, ‘No, I’ll get you in two years,’” Woodley said. “But one year later, Jon goes up, and now you (go) up. Everybody want to be double-belted after Conor (McGregor) did, and I get it. But Jan ain’t someone you can play with. That dude got (expletive) power, and I think it’s something about the underdog that everybody’s looking past.”
Adesanya will take on Blachowicz for the light heavyweight title in the UFC 259 main event on March 6 while Jones is expected to make his heavyweight debut against the winner of Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou later this year.