Rumble: I’m the champ if I beat DC, not my fault what happened to Jones

Anthony Johnson appeared recently on Ariel Helwani‘s The MMA Hour, and said that with Jones stripped of his title, if he beats Cormier, he is the real UFC light heavyweight champion.

“I’ll feel like I’m the champ if I beat [Cormier],” said Johnson as transcribed by Chuck Mindenhall for MMAFighting.com. “I worked my ass off to get where I am. It’s not my fault — it’s not anybody’s fault — with what happened to Jon. Jon did that to himself, everybody knows that. But life goes on, and you’ve got to keep it moving. When he comes back, if I still have the title, and it’s my time to fight him I’ll fight him. But one day, I know we’ll eventually fight.”

Further, ‘Rumble’ agrees that stripping Jones was the right step.

“I think it’s the right call,” he said. “If it was my business I wouldn’t want that to be…I wouldn’t want somebody who did anything like that to be the face of my company. You’re not representing the company the right way doing that type of stuff. And nobody’s perfect, everybody makes mistakes.

“But regardless, if that was my company, if this was his first time doing something like that, I probably would have did just what they did right after that. It’s just something that doesn’t look good towards the fans, and it doesn’t look good on his family. It’s a tough road. It’s very hard to get over something like that.”

“I felt bad for a lot of people,. I felt bad for his family…I felt bad for the UFC…I felt bad for the fans. Because the UFC lost a great champion, you know, and the fans didn’t get to see the fight that they wanted to see yet. His family had to deal with this stuff. Not just Jon, but his overall family and his team and stuff. It’s just tough. It’s a tough road.

“It is what it is. I hope he gets better. Best of luck to him, honestly.”

Anthony Johnson fights Daniel Cormier in the main event of UFC 187 on May 23, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.