Jon Jones admits to being inspired by Conor McGregor.
Perhaps that explains why “Bones” was so quick to cancel his retirement after surrendering the UFC heavyweight title. “Notorious” is no stranger to phony goodbyes and even phonier comebacks, which continue to generate weekly headlines in the combat sports media.
Don’t blame us, you’re the ones who keep clicking on this crap.
“Jon Jones and I don’t see eye to eye in most instances,” longtime rival, Daniel Cormier, said on YouTube. “And boy, he’s been great for my YouTube here this last couple months. Him flopping all over the place has been great for my YouTube. But please don’t become what Conor has become in the media. Every time a big story breaks, Conor’s like, ‘I’m back,’ or ‘I’m doing this.’ Don’t do that.”
“Don’t try to make it about you when you voluntarily walked away from this,” Cormier continued. “Conor didn’t voluntarily walk away. Conor got hurt, and he left. He just hasn’t come back. Jones voluntarily said ‘I’m done.’ So now that he’s done, don’t try to make these stories about you whenever you’re a guy that’s supposed to have walked away from the game.”
You can argue that Conor did, in fact, walk away.
McGregor broke his pinky toe, an injury so severe it fully healed in less than a month. So why didn’t “Notorious” immediately rebook the fight? Unsubstantiated fan theories range from his inability to pass a drug test to financial disputes regarding his UFC 303 payoff.
But to Cormier’s point, Jones simply quit in the face of a monster challenge.
It’s unclear if Jones, 37, is using his absence to wait for newly-minted undisputed champion Tom Aspinall to lose or get released (a tactic “Bones” may have employed in the past), or if he wants to strong-arm the promotion into making a more lucrative deal.
Time will tell.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
