Daniel Cormier has claimed that he wants to move down to fight Jon Jones for the light-heavyweight title if he beats Roy Nelson, but the 205lb champion appears to be underwhelmed by what the Strikeforce heavyweight grand-prix winner brings to the table.
“I hate answering questions about him,” Jones stated during yesterday’s UFC press tour stop in L.A. “He’s just not relevant to me. There’s so many great fighters in the light-heavyweight division. He’s not even top five in his division. I’m not sure if he is.
“He has like, 20,000 twitter followers. He’s has short reach, bad cardio and he looked terrible in his last fight. It’s like, I’m not worried about him at all.”
That rather blunt assessment is unlikely to go down well with the 34 year-old Cormier, a former Olympic wrestling team captain who’s a perfect 12-0 in his MMA career so far fighting at heavyweight, taking out the likes of Frank Mir, Josh Barnett and Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva along the way.
Jones may have a point about his reach though, with Cormier being just 5ft 10″ with a 72.5″ reach. Significantly taller fighters with a wider wingspan have had difficulty laying hands on the unusually long-limbed champion (84.5″ reach) and it could be a tall order (forgive the pun!) indeed for DC to do so.
While Jones appears to be dismissing Cormier as a challenger, so far UFC President Dana White appears to be adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach to the potential match-up, so first things first – Cormier would likely have to defeat Nelson in impressive fashion at UFC 166 in October to have any real chance of making this fight a reality.
Meanwhile, Jones sights are currently set on his next opponent Alexander Gustafsson who he does deem worthy of the opportunity to fight for the title. Beyond that Jones appears to have some interest in a fight with another of the division’s leading contenders, Glover Teixeira.
