Former UFC light heavyweight contender Chael has weighed in his opinion on the latest Jon Jones scandal.
Jones was stripped of his UFC belt this week and banned indefinitely from the promotion after being arrested over a hit-and-run incident in which a pregnant woman was injured.
Chael, who lost to Jones via first round TKO at UFC 159, admitted that the UFC’s decision to revoke Jones’ belt has left him slightly befuddled.
“I’m a little bit confused by it. You have to do something, you have to take some kind of action, I support that, but I don’t fully know what it means to strip a guy of his belt.”
“If you just want to look at the history of fighting, you get stripped for two things – you don’t fight or you’re unable to fight. That wasn’t the situation here.”
Sonnen added that he is unsure what the UFC plan to handle Jones’ inevitable promotional return, when this current debacle blows over.
“I’m also confused (about) what do you do with the guy when he comes back? The guy that’s clearly the best fighter in the world, you don’t put him in a title fight? So what is the fight? Is it a contenders fight? If he wins that does he then get a fight for the championship?”
“Or do you bring him right into a championship fight, but when he walks to the ring he isn’t the champion, he’s the challenger? I just don’t get it, I don’t fully understand it.”
The Gangster from West Linn also broke down exactly how he expects Jones to deal with the press over this fresh controversy.
“He’s going to go PR 101. He’s going to put out some statements about ‘Pray for me’, ‘Think of my family’, ‘Support me in this time’, all of this stuff that’s very boring but it does has a history of working.”
However, Sonnen explained that if the former light heavyweight champion asked him for advice, he would encourage a very different approach.
“If he called me, and I’m probably the last guy he should call, the advice I would have given him is ‘Jon, get to a computer and send out the following tweet: ‘If you thought you hated me before…’ and don’t say another word.”
“I don’t issue apologies, in this particular case, you’re talking about a crime. This is a little bit different. I think that Jon does have a discussion to have here, but he doesn’t need to come out and keep giving fake apologies.”
“If the guy likes to live a wild life, then go live your wild life. We’ve seen plenty of stars go and do that.”
Check out the full interview in the video embedded below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBEdN9s3wEE
