(“What has two relatively healthy thumbs and just screwed with Rashad Evans’s career? This guy!” Photo courtesy of Francis Specker.)
Well, this isn’t going to help the credibility of that swagger-jackin’ Jon Jones. Bones’s manager Malki Kawa took to twitter today with a revelation that will only give more ammunition to the haters who found it a little suspicious that the UFC light-heavyweight champion postponed a fight against Rashad Evans to fix a thumb injury that “doesn’t affect [his] punching or grappling“:
I guess its time to put out the truth. @Jonnybones suffered a tear in his thumb in 2 different spots… Every dr he saw said to have surgery. We went to meet with the surgeon on wed and after he looked at @Jonnybones he thought that surgery was a bit [invasive] and bones didn’t have To have if he didn’t want to. @Jonnybones decided against surgery, and we immediately met with dana and lorenzo the next day to get his next fight scheduled.
For the record, every doctor @Jonnybones saw was a @ufc referred doctor. The very last one on the day before surgery thought against it…And to be quite frank, @Johnnybones never wanted to have surgery, the doctors advice all along was to have the procedure done. No @Jonnybones is not fighting rashad. Rashad is fighting phil davis. I’ll let you know who or when jon will fight real soon.
Do we think Jones ducked Rashad because he’s afraid of his former training partner? Of course not. Judging from the flawless beatings Jones has inflicted on guys like Mauricio Rua and Ryan Bader, that’s a ludicrous suggestion. Unfortunately, perception is reality, and Rashad can now hijack the narrative with the talking point that Jones pulled out of their fight with a fake injury, just to avoid fighting him. (Look, he’s already doing it!) At this point, turning public sentiment against Jones is probably as important to Evans as beating him in a fight. Get ready for a whole lot of mud to be slung…