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NEWARK, NJ - APRIL 26: (L-R) Opponents UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon "Bones" Jones and Chael Sonnen face off during the UFC 159 weigh-in event at the Prudential Center on April 26, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images) | Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Jon Jones keeps waffling, and Chael Sonnen has had enough.
Over the weekend, Jones may have set a record for the shortest-lived MMA retirement, saying on Friday that he was done competing before walking the comments back the next day. It’s the latest will-he-won’t-he from Jones, who retired last year only to unretire a few weeks later, and has both suggested he’s physically unable to compete anymore, while also denying those very claims. And Chael Sonnen is sick of it.
“Jon Jones publicly retired on Friday, which is enough, per the rules, to have yourself removed from the testing pool. Jon Jones, on Saturday, came back and said he is not officially retired, which, per the rules, is enough to reinsert yourself into the testing pool,” Sonnen said on social media. “Now, no, none of that stuff is happening, and it’s all very silly, but there is a question: if you’re the baddest dude in the world and you’re going to be the world champion, you’ve got to be a man. And nobody’s going to mistake you for a man, let alone the man, if they can’t trust you.
“When you put out a statement on Friday and the exact opposite statement on Saturday, there is a simple question, and it’s not whether you’re retired or not or if you’re going to fight again. It’s simply, what good is your word?”
Sonnen went into further detail about Jones on his YouTube channel, saying that Jones’ inconsistency makes him a nightmare to work with.
“When we end up in a situation like this with Jon, where he’s in and he’s out,” Sonnen said. “… When you do that, you can’t count on a guy like that. And from what we’ve been told, the entire knock on Jon, and why he didn’t get on the White House card, is because they couldn’t count on him. It’s a very tough spot. It really is. …
“It creates a very unusual and difficult position,” Sonnen added. “Dana White came out and spoke about this, and Dana said, ‘Man, there’s nothing different than it has been the last 10 years. I told Lorenzo [Ferttita] a decade ago we can’t make a business off this guy.’
“You can’t count on him. When he shows up, is it fun? Sure, but you know the result ahead of time. It’s very difficult.”
Sonnen then contrasted Jones’ lack of commitment with fellow Hall of Famer Khabib Nurmagomedov, who retired from the sport at the peak of his powers, following the passing of his father, Abdulmanap.
“That’s not how men talk,” Sonnen said of Jones. “There was never a doubt when Khabib said, ‘I’m done,’ that we were never going to get him again. But there was a respect. While there was no doubt, there was respect, because we knew we could trust him. We knew that his word meant something. Whether we liked it or not, whether we liked what he was saying or not, we knew we could count on it.”
Sonnen has plenty of history with Jones, at one time accepting a short-notice fight against Jones for the light heavyweight title at UFC 151. However, Jones refused the bout, leading to the cancellation of the event, and for Dana White to proclaim Jones and his coach, Greg Jackson, a “sport killer.” That event was the genesis of much of the friction that arose between Jones and the UFC over the ensuing years, and was ultimately resolved when Jones defeated Sonnen at UFC 159 just a few months later.
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