Goaded this week amid his long-time rivalry with Jon Jones, veteran UFC Hall of Fame star Daniel Cormier has denied directly calling for his enemy to be stripped of his heavyweight throne.
Cormier, who twice fought former two-weight champion Jones during his Octagon tenure, failed to dispatch the former in either of the pairings. First dropping a title challenge defeat to the dominant force, Cormier found himself on the wrong side of a unanimous decision loss in 2015.
And just two years later, Cormier was stopped with a hellacious high-kick knockout loss against Jones in their title unification clash. Ultimately, seeing the loss scrubbed from his record — to an official ‘No Contest’, Cormier has tried in recent years to quell their feud.
To no avail, it seems, however, with Jones recently goading Cormier once more. Claiming that if they competed at the heavyweight limit, he would beat him even worse, Cormier was put in the spotlight this week on his podcast. DC, however, asked him to actually fight the interim champion Tom Aspinall, with fans launching an ever-growing petition to strip the Rochester native of his title.
The petition, which has landed 100,000 signatures to date, is growing faster than ever, especially with Jones’ Asia trip, where he’s been telling fans that he couldn’t care less about the title unification bout.
Rumors have also suggested that Cormier has also put his name on this list of petitioners — something DC has vehemently denied.
“There’s a petition to have Jon Jones stripped of his title,” Cormier told Ben Askren this week, clarifying, “I didn’t sign it — I didn’t. There are 70,000 signatures.”
Meanwhile, laughing off plans to strongarm the UFC into stripping him of his title, Jones admitted he was less than worried about that possibility.
Jones mocks petition to get his title swiped
Winning the vacant heavyweight title in his return in 2023, Jones has fought just twice in the last two years. And the sizeable elephant in the room is the presence of an interim champion — since November of that same year, at that.
Retaining his portion of the crown last year in a questionable reworked fight with Stipe Miocic at UFC 309, Jones made light work of the retiring Ohio veteran.
And this week on social media, amid his tour of Asia, former pound-for-pound number one, Jones, laughed off chances he could see his heavyweight championship taken from his waist.
“Stripped? Lol do I come across as the type of person who cares about things like that?” Jones posted on his social media last week.
Unquestionably holding up the heavyweight title through his inactivity, Jones is less than bothered, however.
Of course, engaging in an impromptu face-off with Aspinall before his return last November, Jones has insisted in the time since that he will not stick or twist for the British star.
As well as insisting it would take f*ck you money for him to return against the interim title, Jones has a personal issue with the former on top of all that.
“He’s (Aspinall) annoying to me. He’s annoying to me, and that’s my own personal opinion—he annoys me. I get it you guys find it entertaining, but I find him annoying. I just don’t like him. And at the end of the day, if I give him the opportunity to fight me, I want to be so compensated-I want to say it, I want that ‘f–k you’ money, honestly,” Jones had demanded.
He has since refused to entertain any questions about the subject, asserting that the UFC already had his answer and it was up to the Dana White-led promotion if they wanted to share it with the public.
