Corey Anderson has been competing in the UFC for five years now and is currently the eighth ranked light heavyweight in the world. That number may not seem high to most fans, but the number next to Anderson’s name at any given moment in time has never prevented him for chasing championship gold. At the moment, Anderson is on a three-fight winning streak over Patrick Cummins, Glover Teixeira, and Ilir Latifi, and is looking better than ever as the three unanimous decisions reflect.
After his victory over Latifi, Anderson took it upon himself to pitch his case for a title shot against Jon Jones. Jones got wind of Anderson’s lobbying and posed a question to his potential future title challenger:
“You sure you want this smoke @CoreyA_MMA” Jones tweeted, to which Anderson promptly responded:
“All the smoke!!”
Six months later in a recent appearance on the Slip n Dip Podcast, Corey Anderson would remind Jones and the general public that he still wants the smoke and would then go into great details on all the varieties of Jon Jones smoke he is currently in the market for (Transcript via BJPenn.com):
“I definitely want the belt,” Anderson began. “So Jones, if you watching or if you see this, you know who it is. You said it after Ilir Latifi. You asked if I wanted that smoke. I told you that I wanted all the smoke! All of it. The crack smoke, the weed smoke, whatever you are smoking put it in my face because I am here. I am not hiding, I’m right here.”
Jon Jones most recently defended his light heavyweight championship against Thiago Santos at UFC 239. He has already stated that he eyes a December return and with no clear-cut #1 contender on the horizon, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Corey Anderson could creep into the conversation and close out 2019 by finally getting his wish uttered on the very first day of the year.
Do you believe there is any realistic hope for Corey Anderson to get (or survive) the aforementioned “smoke” of Jon Jones in 2019?
