Over the last few days, light heavyweight arch rivals Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones have generated another tidal wave of headlines with a heated war of words on Twitter. 

At one point during this verbal skirmish, Jones asked Cormier “who’s your daddy.”

Good luck in your next fight, I’ve always wanted to be heavyweight champ… who’s your daddy?

— BONY (@JonnyBones) June 25, 2018

While this comment seemed simple at a glance, Cormier says there’s a deeper meaning. He feels the comment is related to the tragic murder of his father.

Cormier explained on the UFC 226 media conference call.

“It’s kind of what he does,” Cormier said (transcribed by Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie). “Before our very first fight there were some direct messages sent, and he said he was my daddy or some shit like that. I guess fans, somebody told him something in reference to my father being murdered, so he had [UFC President] Dana [White] call me on three-way to apologize for saying anything like ‘I’m your daddy.’ But, every time we argue, he goes back to ‘I’m your daddy’ or something like that. He didn’t mean to apologize. So there’s deeper meaning to ‘who’s your daddy?’

“There’s deeper meaning to the history and him going through that unnecessary step of having Dana call me on the phone so he could personally apologize for saying anything about my father when he just kind of goes back to it every time we start to argue. So there’s deeper meaning to most of the stuff that we say. So outside of saying anything about my wife, and also the thing about daddy. Look, the guy’s not a good guy, so why would a scumbag like that have any limits?”

While this sounds like a pretty low blow from Jones, Cormier says he’s not dwelling on it. Instead, he’s focused solely on his UFC 226 heavyweight title fight with Stipe Miocic.

“This is the biggest fight of my career because I’m fighting the heavyweight champ of the world, the most successful heavyweight champ of the world,” Cormier said. “Stipe is great. Do I think he’s the best heavyweight of all-time? No. I still think Cain Velasquez is. But I do think he’s the most successful heavyweight champion of all time. It’s a big fight.”

Do you think we’ll ever see Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones fight again?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/29/2018.