Thursday afternoon at the UFC 214 media day, UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, and former UFC light heavyweight kingpin Jon Jones came face to face for yet another heated staredown ahead of their scrap on Saturday.
Jon Jones, in an effort to make a statement about the physique of Cormier, hit the stage shirtless for the staredown. When the two men came face to face, they remained silent for most of the staredown as they locked eyes. Jones then appeared to say something to Cormier under his breath, that was not picked up by cameras.
Now however, in an interview for Fox Sports, the two men narrated their stare down. Jones reflected on the moment, saying:
“A guy like Daniel, he has my full undivided attention. He says that he’s in my head, and that’s exactly where I want him to be, is in my head, because he is in my head. So we’re facing off yesterday and I come up in his face and he says absolutely nothing, where normally he’s always saying something to me. This time he says absolutely nothing and he’s looking at me, and I look him down and up at him, I don’t know why this came up, but I’m just looking at him in the eyes and I just felt like his presence was so weak he just felt so small to me. I’ve been training with so many heavyweights this camp, and he just looked so small to me, and I just looked down at him and go ‘You look like shit’”.
Cormier recalled the moment very differently than his rival, saying:
“I looked at him, and I stared directly into his face and tried to look through the back of his head, and his eyes shifted. He looked at my shoulders, and he looked down, and he looked all around, and I still looked directly at his face, to let him know that I’m not here to play anymore.”
“I was looking dead through his fucking soul.”
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/28/2017.