UFC president Dana White has responded to Jon Jones’ claims that he’s lying about his high asking price.
Jones has been teasing a move to the heavyweight division for years. After seeing Ovince Saint Preux take on Ben Rothwell, it gave Jones an added boost in confidence with making a move up in weight class. This led to some exchanges between Jones and Francis Ngannou on social media. The two expressed interest in facing each other but it wasn’t meant to be, at least for now.
Dana White Offers Response To Jon Jones
Jones took to his Twitter account to claim that the UFC wasn’t willing to pay him more for a bout with Ngannou. White said this was due to Jones asking for an “absurd” amount of money in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Jones denied this and claimed he never had an asking price.
Speaking to reporters during a media scrum, White said he was amused by Jones’ claim (via MMAFighting).
“It’s fun working out in the gym in the morning and seeing tweets from Jon Jones saying I’m lying,” White said in response. “We have text messages from Jon Jones. It’s not like I can’t prove what I’m saying is true. We have text messages from him but I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to put his text messages out in the press.
“If Jon Jones wants to sit down and take a lie detector test about who’s lying and who’s not, we can do that, too.”
White said that Jones was asking for Deontay Wilder money. Wilder is the former WBC heavyweight champion in the world of boxing. White claimed that Jones was asking for around $30 million.
Fighter pay has always been a hot topic in MMA. While the disclosed payouts are clearly lower for top UFC fighters as opposed to boxers, some have made the argument that those considered to be the cream of the crop are paid significantly more than what is disclosed.
