After revealing his intentions to move up and fight Jon Jones at 205 pounds one day, current UFC 185-pound champion Chris Weidman took things a step further with comments he made on Monday.
Weidman appeared on this week’s edition of “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani and explained why he will not leave the sport without fighting Jon “Bones” Jones.
“I know for a fact, I’m not leaving this sport without fighting Jon,” Weidman said.. “Unless he’s not coming back at all. But if he’s there, and I’m here, people are going to want to see it happen. And I want to see it happen.”
“That’s nothing against Jon,” Weidman said. “It’s just because I’m a competitor. I want to fight the best possible people. I want to have the biggest challenges in front of me and conquer them.”
Weidman compared wanting to fight “Bones” Jones to wanting to fight Anderson “The Spider” Silva.
“That’s why I wanted to fight Anderson Silva when nobody else wanted to fight him,” said Weidman. “I want the biggest challenges. I want to beat people who people think I can’t beat. And Jon is definitely going to be one of those guys.”
For now, Weidman will resume focus on his current task at hand, which is to defend his UFC Middleweight Championship against highly regarded contender Luke Rockhold in the co-main event of UFC 194: Aldo vs. McGregor, which takes place on Saturday, December 12, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Check out Chris Weidman’s complete appearance on “The MMA Hour” at MMAFighting.com.