For everyone that is somewhat out of the loop with the entire Rashad Evans vs. Jon Bones Jones beef, let me summarize it in the same timeframe that it would take you to watch the intro for Captain Planet. Evans and Bones were the best of buds at Greg Jackson’s camp. Evans was slated to face Shogun for the UFC light heavyweight title, but he suffered an injury. Instead of postponing the fight, he gave up his title shot to fellow teammate, Jon Jones. Before the fight, Jones publicly stated that he would never fight Rashad Evans, but after winning the title from Shogun Rua, Jones then said ‘I’ll do whatever the UFC wants.’ Evans then left Greg Jackson and started his own gym in Florida with JZ Calvacante among others notables. The UFC assembled Evans vs. Jones for the UFC light heavyweight title and both parties agreed. Suddenly, Jon Jones pulled out of a fight due to an injury, but upon further inspection it wasn’t an injury that affected anything fight related. Jones managers admitted to ‘faking’ an injury, and then Evans (and the rest of the MMA world) accused Bones of ducking a fight. If I timed it right, at this point you would hear ‘The Power is Yours’ from Captain Planet and the episode would start. Instead, we’ll just segue over to what Evans told MMAMania radio earlier this week regarding an altercation he had with Jon Jones at the UFC Fighter Summit.
“I saw Jon this past week at the fighter summit and we were at the same location. He pulled me to the side and he said “Rashad, I need to talk to you, I think things are getting out of control” I thought it was pretty mature for the young guy instead of just ignoring me. First thing he said was ‘I just wanna be the first to tell you is I’m gonna destroy you, I’m gonna annihilate you and I’m gonna show the world you’re overrated. I’m gonna punish you and you’ll be my first highlight reel knockout’ and I just started laughing.”
“You brought me out here to tell me you’re gonna destroy me? Let’s not even talk about how stupid that sounds.Why would you wanna come way over here to say that in private. Furthermore, how did you even come up with that? He’s like ‘Rashad, remember when I was catching you knees and elbows in training’ but I said ‘I was simulating Bader. I wasn’t trying to beat you, Jon. I was simulating Bader and what he might do’ I told him, ‘do you remember when I held you down and I was slapping you and punching you in the face and you were underneath me and you couldn’t move and then you looked me in the eye and said ‘Ok, can we get up now?’ and I said ‘No Jon, if you quit now, you’ll quit in the fight. You gotta earn your way up,” so we fought some more and you couldn’t move some more and you said ‘can you help me?’ and I said ‘No, you have to earn your way up’ and we go for a little bit longer and you still can’t get up so you roll on your back to let me choke you out thinking I’d let you up and be satisfied with that but I didn’t. I continued to make you work up.’ I said ‘do you remember that?’ and he said “yeah, I remember that’ and I said ‘that’s why you don’t want to fight me‘ and he was just lost for words for a second and he told me, ‘Rashad, you just motivating me. You don’t know what you started’ and it just went like that and it just ended when a couple people from our parties separated the two of us. He couldn’t let it go.”
Eventually, we will all have to take sides like some type of post-apocalyptic alliance scenario. So who are you with: Team Jones or Team Evans? Choose wisely, sofa warrior. [Source]
