Manager: Jon Jones is ‘1000 percent’ focused on Gustafsson, not super fights
While Anderson Silva may still be interested in ‘Super Fights’, particularly if he is able to defeat Chris Weidman in their end-of-year rematch at UFC 168, that’s apparently the last thing on the mind of UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones.
Jones is currently preparing to take on Alexander “The Mauler” Gustafsson, whom he faces in the main event of UFC 165 on September 21 in Toronto. Although it’s fun to speculate about fights against the top fighters in other divisions, Jones’ manager Malki Kawa tells MMA Weekly that he knows where his priorities lie with Gustafsson:
“Me and him always speculate and talk, we’ll do this and we’ll beat this guy up, we’ll drop here and go up there, but the reality of it is, in any serious conversation, we take it fight by fight. Once the fight is over with, we’ll look at where the landscape of MMA is at, his division, any other opportunities or goals that he has, and let’s attack them immediately after the fight. But right now, it’s 1,000 percent Alexander Gustafsson.”
The Gustafsson bout in particular is special becuase Jon Jones is currently tied with Tito Ortiz for the most consecutive title defenses in the UFC light heavyweight division. A victory over “The Mauler” would mean “Bones” would stand alone as the UFC’s most dominant light heavyweight champion.
“When somebody sets out to publicly make a goal, where they say, ‘I want to be the greatest of all time. I want to set the record in my division. I want to do this, that, and the other.’ It just so happens that Alexander Gustafsson is the next guy in that series of goals that [Jones] has; it’s a really big deal. It’s a huge fight for him. It’s the record-setting fight. It’s the record that he wants to achieve and it’s basically what he’s going to do.”
Topics:
UFC NEWS