Jon Jones has spent years sitting at or near the top of every all-time list, and he just admitted there was one man he thought could knock him off it. That was Ilia Topuria. Jones made the comment on the Prince St. Pizza YouTube show, in a clip Championship Rounds posted to X on Wednesday.
“Honestly I thought that Ilia would be the first threat to being considered the greatest of all time. And then we saw what happened to him.”
The second sentence carries all the weight. In the clip, Jones never names a fight, an opponent or a date. He leaves “what happened to him” hanging there in the past tense, like a verdict that’s already been read.
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The admission itself is rare. Jones doesn’t usually hand out compliments that put other fighters anywhere near his own legacy, and he picked a featherweight to do it. Topuria’s shadow over the 145-pound division is still long enough that MMA Fighting’s Jed Meshew, in a UFC 333 roundtable published Monday, argued that part of Alexander Volkanovski’s run as the best featherweight in the world happened “because Ilia Topuria let him be.” In the same piece, Meshew wrote that Diego Lopes “was never the best non-Topuria featherweight.” That’s the kind of language people use about a guy who left a hole when he moved on.
Topuria hasn’t vanished from view, either. He turned up at the MMA RKENA event in Georgia over the weekend, and Argentine commentator Gaston Reyno, who goes by Tonga, posted video of the entrance on X, calling him a superstar who gets noticed wherever he goes.
Jones has had a talkative week. In another clip from the same appearance, also shared by Championship Rounds, he said he turned down an offer to fight on the UFC White House card because the two sides couldn’t agree on terms.
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“It was my decision. I could’ve fought, we just couldn’t come up to an agreement... It’s one of my small regrets that I have to live with forever.”
A day earlier, Jake Paul posted on X asking whether Jones could request a release from the UFC, the way Shakur Stevenson did, so a Jones vs. Francis Ngannou fight could happen elsewhere. Paul claimed the UFC had “already said they are never working with Francis.” Jones reposted it. That doesn’t count as a negotiation, but it’s also a long way from a no.
The all-time debate gets fresh material this Saturday, Oct. 24, at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi. Volkanovski defends his featherweight title against the unbeaten Movsar Evloev in the main event, and Petr Yan meets Merab Dvalishvili in a bantamweight trilogy as the co-headliner. Meshew wrote that a Volkanovski win would put him at nine title fight wins to Jose Aldo’s 11, close enough to make the featherweight GOAT argument a real one.
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Here’s my issue. If you’re going to tell the world the one fighter you feared has fallen off, say what you mean. “We saw what happened to him” works as a shrug, and a shrug lets Jones keep his throne without ever naming the fight that supposedly ended Topuria’s challenge. I’d love to hear Topuria’s answer. Jones gave him a compliment and a dismissal in two sentences, and Topuria has never been the type to let the second one slide.
