With Jon Jones’ UFC return just around the corner, the UFC heavyweight champion is being talked about a little more than usual.
On November 16, Jon Jones finally returns for what could be his final fight in the UFC Octagon as he takes on Stipe Miocic in a highly anticipated heavyweight title fight in the UFC 309 main event.
The two were originally scheduled to fight in November last year, but ‘Bones’ tore his pectoral muscle in training, resulting in him taking more time away from action.
NBA star James Johnson claims he could beat Jon Jones in an MMA fight
During Jones’ time out, he has been consistently called out by interim champion, Tom Aspinall, who is hopeful the greatest of all time will stick around after his fight against Miocic to fight him if he wins.
However, Aspinall isn’t the only sports star who has made the headlines for calling out the champion. Power Forward for the Indiana Pacers in the NBA, James Johnson, has claimed he could beat ‘Bones’ in an MMA fight.
Last year, the NBA star made the audacious claim that with a year of MMA training, he could beat Jones inside the Octagon. The 37-year-old recently doubled down on his bizarre claim, which evoked a response from the heavyweight champion.
Johnson, who claims he has a background in kickboxing, stated that he has a 20-0 record in the ring, however, none of the record-tracking combat sports sites show evidence of his undefeated record.
“I truly, truly believe that (I can beat Jon Jones). I’ve been doing this my whole life. Like, real training really would be for that groundwork. As far as standing up in a fight, I feel like I got an advantage,” Johnson claimed on the OG Podcast.
Jon Jones responds to NBA stars’ ludicrous claims
Although he is just over a week out from his highly anticipated return, Jones took some time out of his fight camp to respond to Johnson’s ludicrously audacious comment.
“I didn’t realize until now, that basketball players got CTE as well, this man sounds crazy,” Jones hilariously responded.
The 37-year-old champion wasn’t the only UFC fighter who took to the comment section of the post to flame the NBA player, as former middleweight champion Israel Adesanya also shared a comical response to Johnson’s claim.
“I see red bro!” Adesanya commented.
Johnson is also said to have a 7-0 MMA record, however, just like his kickboxing record, it is not recorded on any of the major MMA record tracking websites.
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