Any hopes for a potential super fight between UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and longtime UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones were all but scrapped last weekend.
However, Adesanya's loss to current 205-pound champion Jan Blachowicz has not stopped his camp from taking shots at “Bones.”
Adesanya's coach, Eugene Bareman, told Submission Radio that Jones' past violations regarding performance-enhancing drugs removes him from the conversation of greatest light heavyweight:
“Once you cheat, Jon Jones is about as irrelevant as TJ Dillashaw,” Bareman said, via Jesse Holland of SB Nation. “It’s like, to me they don’t exist. Like, yeah, is anything that TJ Dillashaw did in the past relevant now that he’s cheated? No. It’s not any different for Jon Jones. So, you can’t talk to me about Jon Jones. I have a particular opinion, and that isn’t shared by the rest of the world. So, at the moment the greatest 205-er is Jan Błachowicz. There’s no one else. There’s no one else as great as him.”
Jones's decision to vacate the light heavyweight strap and move to heavyweight ultimately paved the way for the Adesanya-Blachowicz bout.
Blachowicz knocked out Dominick Reyes to capture the vacant strap. He immediately welcomed the chance to face Adesanya, who moved up from 185 pounds to challenge the new light heavyweight champion.
Article Continues BelowFor Adesanya, the fight was a chance to prove he could move up and take bigger fighters. He had been speaking on a fight with Jones for some time, and beating Blachowicz seemingly would have made that dream bout appear more realistic.
But Blachowicz's size wore on Adesanya over the course of the fight. He grappled with the 185-pound champion and smothered him in the final two rounds, winning by unanimous decision.
Now, the Jones fight appears all but dead. But it might be good riddance, as far as Bareman is concerned.
Jones, meanwhile, has yet to find a fight at heavyweight.