Jon
Jones continues to be at odds with the UFC regarding financial
terms, and the former light heavyweight champion has once again
taken to Twitter to express his concerns.
Jones revealed
that he had a call with UFC executive vice president and chief
business officer Hunter Campbell to begin negotiations for a
potential blockbuster fight against Ngannou, the newly-crowned
heavyweight champion.
“I had a brief phone meeting with UFC‘s lawyer Hunter a few days
ago,” Jones wrote on Twitter. “As of right now I expressed to him
that anywhere around $8 to $10 million would be way too low for a
fight of this magnitude. That’s all that has been discussed so
far.
“I’m supposed to be waiting for what their offer is going to be.
Really hoping the numbers are nowhere near that low. I guess we
will see what happens.”
After Ngannou knocked out Stipe
Miocic in the UFC 260 headliner on March 27, Jones tweeted
“Show me the money,” which led to a
contentious exchange with UFC president Dana White, who
responded to Jones Twitter comments at the post-fight press
conference.
“If I’m Jon Jones and
I’m home watching this fight, I start moving to 185,” White sad.
“Listen, I could sit here all day and [ask] you, ‘What’s ‘Show me
the money” mean?’ I tell you guys this all the time: You can say
you want to fight somebody, but do you really want to?”
On Wednesday, after sharing his initial thoughts regarding what he
doesn’t want to be offered, Jones explained that he felt he
was underpaid by the promotion throughout his 20s during his
dominant rise to prominence as light heavyweight champion.
I’ve been working my ass off for years, concussions, surgeries,
fighting the toughest competition UFC had to offer throughout my
20s for right around #2 million per fight,” Jones wrote. “I’m just
trying to have my payday, the fight that all of us fighters believe
is one day possible.
I tweeted show me the money and that evidently pissed off the boss.
What a learning lesson. I feel like if Conor [ would’ve sent that
same tweet there would have been whiskey night.”
There’s no question that a potential Jones-Ngannou matchup will be
big business for the UFC. At the moment, though, it appears that
there won’t be a smooth path to making it happen.
“I feel like this fight is monumental, matchups like this don’t
come very often in a lifetime,” Jones wrote. “Me stopping Francis
in my first fight up at heavyweight would be nothing short of
extraordinary. Ali versus Foreman, hosted by the UFC.”