Why Jones wants Lesnar not Miocic

UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones defeated Daniel Cormier Saturday night at UFC 214. Despite years of bad blood, Jones spoke warmly and respectfully of the former champion, with remarkable dignity and class.

Then at the post-fight press conference, Jones entertained talk of a superfight one division up. Brock Lesnar is one of a handful of the biggest pay per view draws in UFC history and division champion Stipe Miocic isn’t. Stipe Miocic is arguably the best fighter in division history, and Brock Lesnar inarguably isn’t. So in the risk-reward calculation, everything favors fighting Brock Lesnar.

I feel like if I was going to take a fight at heavyweight it would be against a person who me and my coaches feel makes sense for me, said Jones, as transcribed by Mike Bohn and Ken Hathaway for MMAjunkie. Right now, Stipe is looking extremely impressive. And I believe if you get an extremely talented big guy versus an extremely talented little guy, I feel like a lot of the cards are in his favor. I fear no man, but I strike for a reason when I strike. I feel like Stipe is relatively unknown to the general public. It wouldn’t even be a real superfight in my opinion.”

I think a lot of MMA fans would be super excited about, but the general public wouldn’t care about that fight. Most people don’t really know who is, with all due respect to him. If I’m going to sacrifice being the smaller guy, I think stylistically Brock would be a fight that makes way more sense, and the payday would be tremendous. What it would do for our sport would be tremendous. Much bigger impact.

Conor McGregor, he has been a tremendous inspiration to me. He has shown me, who has been at the upper echelon of this sport for many years now, he has shown me that these huge paydays are possible. I never thought in my time as champion that we would be able to see fighters making $70 million or whatever he’s making for this Mayweather fight. It’s an inspiration that you can do it. I see it as possible, and that’s what McGregor has done for me.

I feel like a new champion; this is my time to start over and to be a better champion and be the champion that the fans deserve. I feel like the best is yet to come. At age 30 I feel like I’m in my physical and mental prime. I feel like my best years are still ahead of me. I think it’s going to be very scary for a lot of these light heavyweights that I’m still the youngest guy in the division, and I’ll be here for a very long time.

While Jones may very, very well be around for a long time, a fight with Lesnar won’t happen any time soon. Lesnar has six months and twelve days of an anti-doping suspension left, and the suspension it tolling until he re enters the USADA testing pool.