Jon Jones may have moved past his feud with Daniel Cormer, but “D.C.” himself has had a harder time letting go.
Appearing on Tuesday’s edition of The Pivot Podcast, Cormier tackled the subject of Jones, who recently suggested he’d moved on from their rivalry. The pair had two memorable fights in the UFC, with Jones winning both — though the second, at UFC 214, was overturned to a No Contest after Jones failed his drug test.
Their rivalry outside the octagon was just as heated, going so far as Jones threatening to take Cormier’s life.
Now, Jones appears to be moving on, but Cormier simply can’t.
“He said something last night on Twitter, ‘I know you’re not going to believe me, but I have nothing against DC.’ Why would he?” Cormier questioned. Cormier, who admitted to being kicked, and kneed, particularly hard in their second fight, noted that “It’s easy for him to say that he’s past that stuff, because he’s the one who cheated.”
“The dude is so talented, he could have won the fights anyway. The first time we fought, 2015, that’s seven years ago, I’m 36 years old. Dude was like 24. Young man. Tall, got all the physical gifts. He beats me. He gets suspended for the the first thing,” Cormier recalled. “Next time steroids, failed. Next time, steroids, failed. Every time we fight and you get suspended, we still went through the memory of you winning the fight, that memory does not disappear. Even though it’s a no-contest, people saw me lose.”
The result of that, for Cormier anyway, is that he’s left with unfinished business. “For me it’s like, you did some stuff to my career, to where I could never really settle. Maybe the dude was just better than me, but if you weren’t doing those things that boosted you, could you really work to the level that I’m working?”
Cormier returned to heavyweight, where he started his career, and claimed a second UFC title following Jones being stripped of the light heavyweight belt — becoming the second simultaneous double champ after Conor McGregor. He retired in 2020, after losing a pair of fights against Stipe Miocic to close out that trilogy.
Since then, D.C. has been working as a UFC analyst — and he sees Israel Adesanya hitting the heights that Jon Jones could have, in terms of “expanding the box of what a mixed martial artist can be.”
“Jones was going to be the man. If he had stayed clean, he would have been the man, because people loved him. All athletes loved him, and loved what he did.”
