Jon Jones put his rivalry with Daniel Cormier to rest last night after producing a third round knockout victory to win back his light-heavyweight title, but it seems the champion is now looking to set up another massive fight – both literally and figuratively.
“Brock Lesnar — if you want to know what it feels like to get your ass kicked by a guy 40 pounds less than you, meet me in the Octagon,” Jones stated at the end his post-fight interview in the Octagon, before dropping the mic and walking off as the crowd roared in approval.
The comment wasn’t completely out of the blue as Jones had already mentioned an interest in the fight earlier in the week, but this public call-out made it feel as if it really might happen, and adding fuel to the fire was a quick response from Lesnar himself.
“Be careful what you wish for, young man,” former heavyweight champion Lesnar responded via the Associated Press just minutes later.
Backstage after UFC 214, Jones went into more detail about why he was interested in fighting a veritable man-mountain like Lesnar.
“I think it’s about time for me to be involved in a super fight,” Jones said on FOX Sports 1. “I think that’s what the fans really want to see is me challenge myself against a heavyweight and why not do it against the biggest and most scary heavyweights in UFC history in Brock Lesnar.
“He brings a tremendous following and I just think it would be so great for the sport of MMA.”
If he wants a superfight though, why not just go straight to UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic?
It’s a question that Jones has clearly given some thought to.
“I feel like if I was to take a fight at heavyweight, it would be against a person that I would feel is the perfect matchup for me..I strike for a reason when I strike. I feel like Stipe is relatively unknown to the general public, so it wouldn’t even be a real super fight. I think MMA fans would be really excited about that fight, but the general public wouldn’t care about that fight. Most people don’t really know who he is, with all due respect to him.
“If I’m going sacrifice being the smaller guy, then Brock would be a fight would make way more sense. The payday would be tremendous and what it would do for our sport would be tremendous. It would have a much greater effect.”
Jones went on to admit that he’d been inspired by lightweight champion Conor McGregor’s pursuit of big-money superfights, but it remains to be seen if this one with Lesnar will actually go through as there’s still a lot of hoops to be jumped through, most significantly the fact that Lesnar is under contract and is still under a USADA suspension, before it could even become a possibility.
“It’s fun to talk about, but the reality of it happening anytime soon, it’s not a reality,” Dana White said at the post-fight press conference, though he sounded open to the general idea of the two meeting in the Octagon.
