Jon Jones fires back after being dubbed a “bad employee” by longtime UFC rival Daniel Cormier

The long-running feud between UFC champion Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier will never die.

In April, the UFC will go to trial over their antitrust business practices. Names such as Cung Le have bankrolled a decade-long lawsuit, alleging that the company bought out competitors, while also driving down fighter pay. In the last few months, the case has had a lot of activity, and the two sides are finally set to go to trial.

Throughout this trial, a lot of private conversations from names such as Dana White have been released. Earlier this month, text messages between the promoter and Lorenzo Fertitta from 2014 were released. In private, the two dubbed Jon Jones a “scumbag” and “punk”. It seems that Daniel Cormier understands their assessment.

“Some of his text messages were leaked in regards to Jon Jones. They were very mean text messages. Not nice. But I may have a little bit of a different view of this than most,” Daniel Cormier stated to Ben Askren on his YouTube channel earlier this week. “You and I both own businesses. We’ve all had bad employees. There’s different levels, right? In our business, it’s being late, maybe not showing up on time, maybe not always being tapped in to the practices. With Jones, it’s about being at the fight, doing the promotion, being easier to work with.” (h/t MMA News)

RELATED: DANA WHITE UNBOTHERED BY ONGOING UFC ANTITRUST TRIAL: “IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME”

Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones go back-and-forth following leaked text messages

It’s worth noting that Daniel Cormier failed to mention any of the other text messages relating to the suit. Beyond talk about Jon Jones, Dana White, and Lorenzo Fertitta privately mocked the likes of Nate Diaz and others. He believes that the bigger issue is that his rival was a bad employee.

“In those moments when you have an employee that isn’t working in the way that you think, you say stuff!” Daniel Cormier continued. “It’s like, you say things about an employee that isn’t doing the things that you want. Do you believe for a second that Dana didn’t say that to Jon’s face? There’s no way he didn’t! He told him the exact same thing to his face. Then he goes and he talks to his friend, who is also his business partner, about the situation and says the exact same thing. Is it really that big a deal? Some of the stuff I’ve said to other people about people that work for me, it’s kinda crazy!”

Just hours after Daniel Cormier’s comments, Jon Jones responded. In two posts on X, ‘Bones’ indicated that his rival must still have issues with him due to their fights in the cage. Jones famously handed two losses in the octagon, although his 2017 knockout win was overturned due to a failed drug test.

“Never let a “bad employee” beat you up and take everything from you twice. It’ll leave you bitter for a really long time evidently” Jon Jones posted to X earlier today. “No [that wasn’t to Dana], that was to DC”

What do you make of this news? Who do you side with? Daniel Cormier or Jon Jones?