UFC light heavyweight contender Jimi Manuwa is not interested in booking a fight with former division kingpin Jon Jones, at least not yet.
“The Poster Boy” scored another highlight reel knockout in the featured bout of last night’s UFC Fight Night 107 event in London sending his opponent Corey Anderson crashing to the canvas with a brutal left hand in the opening round.
Following his sensational knockout victory over Anderson, Manuwa spoke to reporters at the post-fight press conference where he was asked to share his thoughts on a potential fight with former light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones (as transcribed by MMAFighting).
“I’m not interested in Jon Jones. Jon Jones takes steroids and now he’s been banned for steroids,” Manuwa said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “Before, I was a big fan of Jon Jones, the things he’s done in the Octagon and everything, but he’s been suspended for a year or something and he’s had issues before. He’s a great fighter. I greatly respect him, but he’s been banned for steroids and that taints everything that he’s done. So, I’m not really interested. When he comes back, I’ll fight him, no problem. But I’m focused on the belt right now, and that’s going to be the winner of DC and ‘Rumble’ Johnson.”
He continued:
“I will be fighting the elite fighters in the world, and I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. He’s back in July or something. [Cormier and Johnson] are fighting next month, so the fight could be made before he comes back anyway, so we’ll see what happens. I’m going to fly to Vegas to meet with (UFC president) Dana (White) after this and we’ll see what happens.”
Jimi Manuwa has now won two fights in a row, both via knockout, as he had previously turned out the lights on Ovince Saint Preux this past October.
With that said, “The Poster Boy” has gone 3-2 in his past five contests overall, suffering knockout losses to Anthony Johnson and Alexander Gustafsson in that time.
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