Daniel Cormier isn’t trying to beef with Jon Jones — he just doesn’t want to be his friend.
Cormier and Jones have engaged in one of the greatest and most heated rivalries in MMA history. And even now, nearly a decade since they last fought each other, the fires of the feud still burn. Recently, the two former UFC champions competed against each other again, this time as coaches on a reality TV show in Thailand, and when it was all said and done, nothing much had changed.
After the show, Jones called
Cormier “an asshole” and a “d*ckhead,” saying he tried to reconcile with the two-time Olympian but to no avail. Speaking recently with Ariel Helwani, Cormier disputed Jones’ version of events, saying he simply has no interest in having a friendship with his longtime rival.
“Maybe I’m all those things to him,” Cormier said. “Here’s the deal: we were around each other every single day. We were cordial. We had times where Jon and I actually laughed. We laughed together at stuff. But if I didn’t have to be around him, I’m not going to voluntarily be around him. Why would I want that?
“I don’t harbor the emotion of the past that I did with him. I really don’t. But we spoke negatively about each other’s families; we had a nasty, nasty thing. He cheated, constantly. I don’t have to let him off the hook and be his friend. That would be me just going, ‘Everything you did is good.’ It’s not. It wasn’t good. So yeah, I can be cordial, I can work alongside you, I can do my thing, but I don’t have to be your friend. I’m a man. It is what it is. I’m not going to be friends with you.”
It’s not surprising that Cormier doesn’t wish to connect with Jones on that level. Jones handed Cormier his first loss in MMA, and then was removed from their scheduled rematch at UFC 200 after popping for a banned substance. The two finally rematched at UFC 214, which Jones won via head kick knockout, but that was later overturned after Jones again failed a drug test.
Given their history and the very personal nature of some of their attacks at each other, Cormier is fine with having a distant relationship with Jones.
“I don’t need to be [friends with him],” Cormier said. “I always tell him that. I said, ‘Hey man, happy endings and fairytales are for kids that need these things to go to bed at night. Little girls who believe in princesses and princes.’ You don’t need to be friends with everybody. You don’t have to be friends with everybody that you had a problem with. It’s fine. Just do your thing, I’ll do mine, and we’ll be OK.
“Like, y’all want to pay us to do this show? OK. A boatload of money? I can do a show with him, and I want to beat him. But we don’t need to be friends. We don’t need to be getting drinks together and having dinners and doing all these crazy things. You don’t need to have fairytale endings to everything in life. Life ain’t fair, man. And if fair is me being your friend, sorry, you’ve got a life ahead of you that will not be fair. But am I going to run at Jon Jones and fight him every time I see him? No. If he says hi to me, I’ll say to hi to him, but why do we need to be friends?”
