Jon Jones spent part of his Sunday on X, and Dominick Reyes came up. Replying to a fan who wrote that Reyes was “speaking down on you goat,” Jones offered his former title challenger some unsolicited comfort: “Send this to him, I’m giving you a virtual hug. I hope one day you heal from such a defeat. Close but no cigar. Sweat more, pass that on to the next generation.”
He kept going for a few more minutes. In a reply to another fan, Jones wrote, “At the end of the day, it’s just sports we’re talking about. Can’t be bitter forever.” A separate post read, “Damn sweat More. And don’t lose to the old guy. lol” Then he called it a day with “Let me log off before I start talking shit. That was fun. Have a good day nerds ☀️ get outside today.”
The timing tracks. On Saturday at UFC 333, Reyes stopped Azamat Murzakanov in Round 1, and it was a well-built finish. He went to work on Murzakanov’s leg early, and once that was compromised he went high with a kick and chased it with a left hand straight down the middle for the TKO. Fan accounts on X were losing their minds in real time, and THE MMA GURU summed it up as “Reyes back with a bang.”
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The Jones angle came out of what Reyes said afterward, and it was aimed at Daniel Cormier. As Championship Rounds shared on X, Reyes wrote: “Real talk, who actually likes hearing low iq hater ass DC? Sick of being the nice guy while these clowns flat out disrespect and marginalize what I’ve done in this sport.” He closed with a shot that dragged Jones into it: “And no Jon jones didn’t whoop all of us, he whooped you! Bad! Multiple times. Kid.”
Cormier answered with something close to a hand on the shoulder. “Yo dom chill,” he wrote, adding that he praises Reyes when he does something special and tells him the truth when he doesn’t. He also said it seemed like Reyes had been carrying something around for a while, and told him, “You can always talk to me. I’m not very hard to find.”
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So the shot at Jones was really a shot at Cormier, and Jones decided to take it personally anyway. He also teased fans a bit. When one wrote that they missed him as heavyweight champ, Jones answered with a cryptic line about never saying never and what lives inside him as a gift. Read into that whatever you like. None of the weekend’s posts mentioned a next fight for Jones or for Reyes.
My take: Jones telling someone to stop being bitter about a 2020 fight, on a Sunday afternoon, in a reply to a fan account, is the funniest thing in this whole exchange, and I think he knows it. That fight was close, and close is exactly the kind of result that keeps itching for years. But Reyes just won with the best version of himself, the one who breaks a leg down first and then goes looking for the head. That’s the guy who should be doing the talking. The DC feud gets him clicks. The leg kicks get him another fight against someone ranked.
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