As you might have guessed, Daniel Cormier still does not believe Jon Jones is the GOAT.
The bad blood between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier has been well documented for several years now, so it is nothing new or out of the ordinary for Daniel Cormier to issue remarks that are anti-Jon Jones. Earlier today, Daniel Cormier would deliver a familiar argument regarding Jon Jones GOAT status or lack thereof. Cormier believes that the fact that Jones has drug test failures attached to his name makes any discussion about Jones’s place on the GOAT list a non-starter.
“One of the most talented guys you’ll ever meet but again for me bad [drug] tests eliminate you from the conversation,” Cormier told MMA Fighting. “I just cannot understand how that is so hard to comprehend in a sport where we’re fighting each other. In baseball, bad tests eliminate you from being considered and being in the Hall of Fame and you’re hitting a ball. You’re hitting an object that has no feeling. In fighting, you’re punching people, human beings, and you have bad tests that eliminates you. It’s just too dangerous.”
When you have a loss on your record to someone many believe to be the greatest fighter of all time, it would perhaps seem better for your own legacy to say that you one of your very few setbacks came against the greatest of all time. But when Daniel Cormier thinks back to his fights against Jon Jones, one of which resulting in a knockout that was later ruled a no-contest due to a test failure, all he can consider is how his fights with Jones taints his own legacy because of the outcomes that the drug tests render questionable:
“So I think when you start to think about the greatest of all time for all the things and all the great victories, you can’t look at those, me personally being a guy that those fights did really long term damage to my career, it’s hard for me to say [Jon Jones] is the greatest of all time when every time we fought, there was some sort of issue. That for me, it just kind of changes the conversation.”
Jon Jones did not fail for any performance-enhancing drugs in his first victory over Daniel Cormier at UFC 182, but there was cocaine found in his system, which is the issue Cormier is referring to in the first bout. Jones has consistently denied knowingly taking any performance-enhancing drugs, and either independent arbitration or USADA have stated Jones is not a cheater and/or did not benefit from trace amounts found in his system following every test failure and abnormality. Suffice it to say, Daniel Cormier and most of Jon Jones’s detractors believe that any failure or abnormality is enough of a red flag to erase every accomplishment of Jones or, at the very least, call them into unresolvable question.
Do you agree with Daniel Cormier? Is Jon Jones ineligible for GOAT discussions after his drug test failures and complications?
