The spotlight on the UFC 172 media conference call should have mainly been on the main event pairing of Jon Jones and Glover Teixiera, but co-main event fighter Phil Davis managed to upstage them as he looked to position himself as a future title contender in the division.
Davis is currently ranked No.4 at light-heavyweight, but in a recent interview Dana White claimed that Davis seemed content with that and wasn’t giving the impression that he really wanted to fight for the title.
‘Mr Wonderful’ had been caught off-guard by that statement, reasoning that it was just a misunderstanding on White’s part, but during the media call he made sure to let the world know that he was gunning for Jones, saying that he’d, “break him apart like a sugar cookie.”
However he really raised the bar with his trash-talking antics when he was asked for his opinion on Jones most recent fight with his team-mate Alexander Gustafsson.
“Here’s what happened. Jon Jones came out doing his regular deal and Alex – because Alex and I, we train together and we went over some things to do – I said, listen man, what you really need to do is you need to strong arm him like an American and hit him with a back hand pimp slap.
“I’m telling you right now, Alexander threw seven different kinds of smoke at this dude, Jon Jones didn’t know up from down when he was fighting Alex. He didn’t know what hit him. He didn’t know why he hit him, why he was hitting so hard.
“I honestly still don’t really understand really how he lost, but I will say this – Jon Jones came back the last two rounds, fourth and fifth rounds, came back like a champion. Did he do enough to win? Absolutely not.
“But, I’m going to tell you this, seven different kinds of smoke. Jon Jones was one fire. Seven different kinds of smoke he had.”
Davis’ best zinger came immediately after that when Jones asked him which rounds he thought Gustafsson had won.
“I think he won all the ones where he put them hot hands all over your forehead,” Davis replied to the sound of laughs from many of the others sitting on the conference call.
Incidentally, earlier in the call Jones had cooled off talk about a potential move to heavyweight in the future, stating that he had plenty of challenges left in his own division.
Judging by what happened on yesterday’s call, if Davis wasn’t on Jones’ shortlist before, he certainly will be now.
Take a listen to the full UFC 172 media call for yourselves below courtesy of MMAfighting.
