There is just something about UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones that rubs people the wrong way. A lot of it has to do with his attitude, which isn’t the worst that we’ve seen in sports, but something about it is just disingenuous. Jon Jones never says stuff that is outwardly offensive, just stuff that is off and finds a way to make him look better than other people without flat out saying it. This is the plight of Jon Jones. If he would just embrace it and talk about being the greatest as opposed to playing the humble card all of the time he’d probably be able to really cement his legacy.
Oh well. His latest “humble brag” comes from speaking with Ariel Helwani this week, where he talked about his fight with Alexander Gustafsson and how he fought well, but not to take anything away from him, but Jones was off. [link]
I felt my camp was off. I’m not going to make any excuses, Gustafsson showed up, and he did his part, and he fought at a very high level, but you’ve seen me compete better than that. Even my fiancée said, ‘When you were walking out to the cage, you just seemed off.’ If you’re used to watching my performances, there’s just things that I wasn’t doing. I’m better than that; I know I’m better than that.
It gets better. He also feels that contenders are having a really easy road leading to him. [link]
“I wanna see [Gustafsson] fight a top contender. Seems like these guys are not really having the toughest time to get to the belt. Teixeira goes from Bader to a championship fight. Gustafsson went from Shogun to a championship fight. I feel like they save all the dogs for me and they just give the toughest guys the easiest match-ups to get to a title shot. Let’s see some of these top contenders fight each other.”