White: Jones a good guy, we had a great talk
UFC President Dana White and Jon Jones were at odds after Jones turned down a late hour substitution of Chael…
UFC President Dana White and Jon Jones were at odds after Jones turned down a late hour substitution of Chael Sonnen for an injured Dan Henderson at UFC 151, which was subsequently cancelled.
So White and Jones sat down in Toronto to hash things out. Though White didn’t reveal specifics, he appears to be satisfied with the results.
“We had a great talk (Friday),” White told a small group of reporters following the post-event news conference for UFC 152. “I’m not going to talk about anything that we talked about yesterday – we both kind of shook hands as men and made a couple agreements to each other that I will keep, and hopefully he’ll keep his, and we’ll have a great relationship.”
“Jon’s made some mistakes. He has. And now it’s time for him to fix them. He’s going to be around for a long time. He’s not going anywhere unless he does it to himself. Driving while intoxicated is a big mistake, the way the whole thing went down with UFC 151, and then whatever the reason is that fans are negative toward him as it is, calling him fake or phony or whatever.”
“As Jon continues to win more fights, continues to feel comfortable with who he really is, I think he’ll get better all around – publicly, his image, his fighting. There’s times he just feels he’s not comfortable with who he is as a fighter – and he really is a good guy. He’s not a bad guy. And you know me. If things go south and I don’t see eye to eye and things aren’t really right, I’ll let you know.”
White also said, tongue in cheek, that things did not go as smoothly with Jon Jones’ mom!
It was actually when Mrs. Jones got a hold of me – that was the problem,” said White. “Her and I spoke [Saturday] evening and that was more unpleasant than the talk I had with Jon Jones yesterday.
Momma Jones, yes. You can just imagine what Momma Jones had to say to me. The Jon Jones conversation was much better.
