Jon Jones says a lot of things about his fighting career, and many of the things he says change on a day to day basis. But action speak louder than words, so it was interesting to find out that “Bones” is still in the UFC’s drug testing pool, just in case he wants to say yes when the UFC makes their next contractually obligated offer for him to fight.
One bout that he won’t say yes to, though, is a fight with Oleksandr Usyk in a boxing ring. Usyk recently relinquished his many heavyweight titles and revealed
he’d have one ‘last dance.’ Against who? After a controversial win over kickboxing champ Rico Verhooven, there were plenty of choices. One option that few expected was Jon Jones.
The Ring Magazine, which functions as the official press stenographers of Saudi power broker Turki Alalshikh, recently revealed that Jones was a leading candidate to face Usyk. And now we have Jon Jones giving a wide-ranging interview to The Ring. But ever the contrarian when it comes to fight bookings, Jones has said he’s only interested in fighting Usyk under MMA rules.
“Usyk is Usyk, man, he is one of the absolute GOATs of heavyweight boxing” Jones said. “I also am aware that he does wrestling, and that wrestling has been a heavy part of his training for many years, which is probably why he is so dominant in the clinch.”
“If he would like to test his total combat skills, I would oblige in that. But to handicap myself by only using my hands is not the world that I come from. So out of all the heavyweight boxers, I do see Usyk as having the highest potential of making it competitive [in MMA], but I am no boxer.”
“I don’t really consider Usyk to be a complete fighter,” Jones concluded. “I think the world knows what would happen if we were locked in the same room.”
It would be wild for the greatest heavyweight of his generation to end his combat sports career with a crossover fight in mixed martial arts. As Anthony Joshua noted, there’s a steady stream of MMA fighters entering the boxing ring but the number of boxers entering the cage is very, very low.
If Usyk and Turki want Jones, though, it’ll have to be in the cage. Which means it probably won’t happen, which leaves us back where we were before: with Jones not really retired but not looking like he’ll fight any time soon.
