Jon Jones considers fighting his business but he admits that a heated rivalry with Daniel Cormier was not only personal but it brought out the worst in him.
Widely recognized as the greatest fighter of all time, Jones has only faced adversity in the octagon a couple of times during his storied career but he’s largely approached every opponent with the same attitude that he’s there to do a job and win a fight. That all changed when it came to Cormier because Jones confessed that he despised the two-time Olympian so much that it made him work that much harder to ensure he wouldn’t lose when they finally met in the cage.
“Daniel Cormier and I, I swear he’s aged me in a certain way,” Jones told Vic Blends on YouTube. “I fight out of love. I do what I do surely out of love — I love this gift, the opportunity, the fans, the money, everything, I just love it. But with Daniel Cormier there was a hatred that came out for the first time where I just couldn’t imagine losing to this man.
“I remember I got extra workouts on Christmas day just because I hated him at the time so much and couldn’t imagine losing to him. It drove me to beating him but I never want to operate out of that energy.”
Jones knows that his intense disdain was reciprocated because he’s heard Cormier say much the same whenever he’s addressed their rivalry publicly.
“I know he feels the same way about me as well,” Jones said about Cormier. “I’ve heard him say it in interviews like ‘I genuinely hated Jon Jones.’ It was stressful and that training camp took a lot of time and it probably took a few years off of our lives just operating out of so much hate.”
One of the most heated encounters actually took place during an interview Jones and Cormier shared on ESPN with a verbal altercation caught on camera when the fighters had no idea they were being recorded.
The infamous back-and-forth exchange was eventually released and Jones recounted that his desire to actually harm Cormier that day was absolutely genuine.
“We got a leaked behind the scenes moment where I was literally telling him that I was going to kill him,” Jones said. “We thought the cameras were off and we were still live and he was like ‘are you next door?’ and I was like ‘yeah, I’m next door’ and like ‘are you still there p*ssy?’ and he’s like ‘I’m still here.’ He’s like ‘I wish they would let me next door so I could spit in your face.’
“I thought about how often I was seeing him face-to-face and he could actually spit in my face at some point. We have way more media to do. I told him ‘bro, if you do that, I’m going to f*cking kill you, I’ll absolutely kill you’ and I really meant it. That was too dark for sports and very real.”
Jones ultimately shared the octagon with Cormier on two separate occasions and he won both fights, although his knockout win from 2017 was eventually overturned to a no-contest due to a failed drug test.
Regardless, Jones never felt that way about any other opponent and there was nothing made-for-television when it came to his seething hatred towards Cormier.
“Daniel Cormier, we ran into each other [in the street] and thank god we both had our teams around us that kept us separated,” Jones said. “That was the only fighter that I felt like [I might fight in the street].
“Then we actually did fight in the MGM Grand in the lobby before our fight. Daniel Cormier was one of those guys where on sight meant on sight. Anywhere, any time.”
Considering Cormier went onto hold titles at both heavyweight and light heavyweight before being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, Jones could easily consider those wins some of the biggest achievements of his career.
Still, Jones didn’t really like himself very much during that time he spent with Cormier even if they did manage to create one of the most intense rivalries in combat sports history.
“It was good to watch,” Jones said. “But not that much fun being in.”
