Jon Jones was a witness to the chaotic brawl involving Nate Diaz that broke out while they were filming on a TUF-style Russian reality TV show in Thailand recently, and he’s now given his side of what happened.
“We had one of our young fighters, a guy named Zalik, he was playing with Nate,” Jones said in an interview posted by Red Corner MMA. “He wanted to play fight with Nate. Nate kind of came in a little bit on edge. I think he had some previous beef with some Russian fighters, so he was a little bit on edge when he got here.
“Play fighting with Nate was not the best idea. It became serious right away and we had to replace Nate.”
Jones appears to be downplaying Zalik Yusupov’s role on all this as he has earned a reputation for sneaking up on random people and choking them out, as he did to Aljamain Sterling last season.
And he was clearly trying to get a reaction out of Diaz when he approached him – which inevitably led to Zalik being slapped and chaos then ensuing as a result.
Diaz, Jake Shields and their entourage wisely quit the show after that, but Jones has remained on-board to continue serving as one of the team coaches.
