Getty Daniel Cormier & Jon Jones
Reigning UFC heavyweight king Jon Jones took aim at longtime rival Daniel Cormier’s immediate reaction to his title-winning submission last weekend.
Jones became the undisputed champion at UFC 285 on March 4 after taking out No. 1-ranked contender Ciryl Gane with a guillotine choke in the opening round. “DC” was Octagonside at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a color commentator, and the promotion shared a video clip of the former two-division champion’s shocked and confused reaction after the referee waved off the contest. Watch the video below via the embedded tweet, which also includes DC’s fellow commentators Joe Rogan and Jon Anik.
The booth reaction when P4P king @JonnyBones cemented the win 🤯
Some in the MMA community said Cormier appeared bitter after he had just watched his nemesis earn his old belt. One fan tweeted to Jones on March 8, writing: “The fact that DC looked like he was about to cry made that victory even more iconic. You are the best Jon.”
Well, Jones took the opportunity to chime in with his own opinion on DC’s live response to his win. “My man couldn’t even pretend to smile, it was pretty funny,” Bones tweeted. “Asking what happened, an experience former champion and analyst suddenly not being able to identify a guillotine.”
Cormier Dismissed the Claim That He Was Sour About Jones’ UFC 285 Result
DC had addressed the clip a day prior, stating that he wasn’t “bitter at all.” Instead, Cormier said his reaction was of confusion because, from his angle, he couldn’t see that Jones had applied the guillotine choke.
“Not bitter at all, legit couldn’t see what he had tapped to until we saw the different camera angle,” Cormier tweeted. “You guys sure can create things. I really don’t care either way, I’m here to call fights only.”
Jones and Cormier fought twice in the UFC’s light heavyweight division. They competed in 2015 when Bones’ was the champion and he won by unanimous decision. The two greats rematched in 2017 when DC was holding the strap. Once again, Jones left the cage victorious. And that time it was by knockout. However, the result was overturned to a no contest after Jones failed a drug test for PEDs, and DC was reinstated as champion.
Although the possibility of a trilogy match had been teased several times in the following years, a third fight never came to fruition. Cormier retired from MMA in 2020 and at 43, it’s highly unlikely that fans will ever see the two go at it again in a cage fight.
Cormier Wasn’t Expecting Jones to Win the Title in Such Dominant Fashion
Cormier filmed a video after the event while he still sat in the middle of the arena. He congratulated Jones on the feat, saying that Bones took out Gane “impressively,” while also stating that the match went in a way “that not many expected.”
“Jon Jones is the heavyweight champion of the world in a way that not many expected,” Cormier said in the YouTube video. “All week Jon Jones spoke about how easy this fight could be and nobody wanted to believe it — I know I didn’t. I thought he was in for it to the point that at the fighter meeting when Jon Jones was on the phone, I said, ‘Hey, I got one question for you. I said, ‘Just speak about fear. You said you needed that. Does Ciryl Gane present that fear?’
“And he had an answer that was still almost, once again, dismissive of Ciryl Gane. And I didn’t understand it because I figured he was chasing challenges to elevate himself to the next level. Well, he goes out there and dominates in a way that tells me that everything he said he believed from the very start and he just did it.”