Daniel Cormier Reveals Why Jon Jones Trilogy Terms Changed

No matter how many times Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier fight, be it in the verbal sense or the competitive sense, it appears there will always be a large demand to see the two fight again. Even though Jones has gotten the better of Cormier in the past, the drama between the two is always riveting viewing.

For Daniel Cormier, much has happened since he last fought Jon Jones. He became the first man to be a defending double champion and he has earned many awards, including ESPN 2018 Fighter of the Year and the 2019 ESPY Best Fighter Award. At one point in time, Cormier was consumed with his losses (one no contest) to Jones. Now, Cormier has moved on to the point that if he were to fight Jones again, it would need to be worth his while.

“I really don’t need to fight him,” Cormier told ESPN in a recent interview. “If I do, it’ll be on my terms now. I’m the heavyweight champ of the world. I’m the guy who won two belts at once. I did everything. I could never fight him again and be OK. Because ultimately, every time we fought, there was something. And that’s OK for me.”

Daniel Cormier did not specify what the “something” was, but it seems reasonable to conclude he is referring to performance enhancing drugs, traces or otherwise, found in Jon Jones system. However, no performance-enhancing drugs were found in Jones’s system for their 2015 fight. The traces of picograms found in his system for their 2017 fight, on the other hand, has been well documented. Either way, Cormier insists that Jones has always had something in his system, and his expectation for that not changing in the future is why the UFC would need to make it worth his while to fight Jones again:

“It’s gonna cost a lot of money,” Cormier said. “When we talk about the terms of the fight happening, it’ll cost a lot of money, but it’ll make a lot of money. We’ve got to come to terms. Before, it was me. I just got to fight Jon Jones. It’s not like that for me anymore.

“So for me, it’s not just, ‘I got to fight Jon Jones. You gotta pay me to fight him if you want me to. Because ultimately, I don’t feel it’ll ever just be me and him fighting. Because if we fight, there will be something again. Because there always is.”