ANAHEIM, Calif. — It appears Jon Jones might’ve been a little motivated by Conor McGregor when he challenged Brock Lesnar to a super fight following his UFC 214 win over Daniel Cormier.
A Jones-Lesnar megafight would reel in a big payday for the UFC light heavyweight champion. Of course, McGregor will be cashing in a large check of his own after he fights Floyd Mayweather Jr. next month and Jones expressed admiration for McGregor’s pursuit of financial success.
“Conor McGregor, he has been a tremendous inspiration to me,” Jones said during the post-fight press conferences. “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.”
One would think if Jones was going to move up to the heavyweight class, he would target champion Stipe Miocic so that he could win two belts in two different weight classes. But it appears Jones would rather fight a more established name to elicit the largest payday possible.
“I feel like Stipe is relatively unknown to the general public,” Jones said. “It wouldn’t even be a real super fight 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.”
Although a potential super fight between Jones and Lesnar sounds enticing, it likely wouldn’t happen for awhile because Lesnar still needs to serve a suspension due to a doping violation.
But hey, why not start drumming up interest as early as possible?
Thumbnail photo via Joshua Dahl/USA TODAY Sports Images
