Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones were set to fight at UFC 197 in a few weeks, and then Cormier went down with a left leg injury that put an end to that. That's a real shame because, last night, the two got into a Twitter battle that would've made for great pre-match hype if there was still, you know, a match to hype.
It all started after Jones called Cormier a "coward" in an interview after Cormier offered to train his replacement fighter, Ovince Saint Preaux. Jones' entire quote (which he said on The MMA Hour) was "[Cormier] is an absolute coward who will never beat me. And I say that not from an arrogant place. I say that from a place where, me getting my belt back, it means everything to me. That belt right now is a big part of my life. It means everything to me."
Jones was referencing the light heavyweight championship which he lost, not in the octagon, but instead after fleeing the scene of a car accident last year.
That comment kicked off a Twitter "fight" (which is what you have to settle for, at least for the moment) that'd make middle schoolers everywhere proud.
First Jones doubled down on his incendiary quote, while simultaneously ramping up the vulgarity:
A Twitter user pointed out that Jones forgot to put Cormier's name, which gave Jones an easy opportunity to triple-down:
Afterward, Cormier gave a response that couldn't be contained by a mere 140 characters:
Jones' response was (initially) much more concise...:
...before he added to it an hour later:
It's a shame these two won't fight...for now. Though, barring a massive concussion, they'll still remember this when they face off in the future (perhaps at UFC 200?).
Cormier should be ready by then, after all his recovery time is said to be four-to-six weeks.
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[via Twitter, ESPN]
