It is no secret that Daniel Cormier is not a fan of Jon Jones. Nevertheless, he is still able to be complimentary of his rival, during Jon’s recent negotiation issues.
Jones has been beefing with Dana White and the UFC lately, over negotiations for a new contract. He wanted to make more money to move up to heavyweight for a superfight with Francis Ngannou. Although Jones claims he did not even offer a dollar amount, White insists he was asking for what they considered to be an outrageous $30 million.
Since then, Jon Jones has threatened to vacate his light heavyweight title, if not offered proper pay. This has gotten the attention of Daniel Cormier, who actually sides with his rival to a certain extent. Speaking on the DC and Helwani show, he empathized with Jones, expressing understanding for what Jon is going through.
“I won the belt in 2015,” Cormier said. “I got me a good contract and I told Dana and Lorenzo, I said ‘Hey I don’t plan on losing the belt but if I do, at least make my pay 300 grand. Remember when former champions used to make $300,000 and it was like, a pretty good contract? That’s my contract today! $300,000 as the challenger, because luckily for me, I never lost that belt, so I had the same contract making all that money from 2015 to 2019.
“So when it’s time for me to go and negotiate my fight purse for my fight against Stipe Miocic, you think today I want to make $300,000 to fight?” He continued. “No. Do you think I’m gonna make $300,000 to fight? No. Because I’m gonna talk to them, and we’ve had beginning conversations, and they’re going to take care of you, it’s just a matter of how you approach the conversation.
“I am almost 100% certain that the UFC would pay a $7-8 million base for him to go fight Francis, and if he’s such a big star and it’s going to do so well, then maybe the pay-per-view will get you to the number that you want it to be. If it has as much intrigue as people are saying it does…And then that’s on the fans. It’s on the fans who are supporting you in this fight to go out and purchase the PPV, and when they do, now you make all the money that you need. That’s how I feel.”
At the end of the day, it is tough to say what will end up happening here. If Daniel Cormier is right, then perhaps Jon Jones will make the move to heavyweight. Otherwise, things could be getting tricky at 205lb moving forward.
