Rashad Evans suggests Jon Jones is doing things “backwards” in his attempt to negotiate with the UFC

Rashad Evans believes Jon Jones and his team should’ve handled his move to heavyweight much better.

After Jones vacated his light heavyweight title, he said he would be moving up to heavyweight. The plan was to face the winner of Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou 2 this summer. However, after Ngannou became the new champ, Jones started to say the UFC needs to pay him what he wants. For Evans, he believes “Bones” gave up all his negotiating power by already vacating the belt and changing his body for a heavyweight move.

“Jon Jones has already put himself in the position where he doesn’t have that negotiating tool. He’s given up the belt at 205, he’s already put on a ton of weight, a ton of size to fight at heavyweight,” Evans said on the 1-2 podcast on NexGen Sports. “So right now, if I was Jon’s team, that was something you kind of negotiate before you give up the belt and before you decide to make all these changes in your diet. To me it seems kind of backward for him to now being say show me the money. Show me the money was when he was the UFC 205 champion and then he decided to go up. I don’t know, maybe sometimes Jon just doesn’t say the best things, you know what I’m saying? But hopefully, that fight gets done.”

Rashad Evans certainly has a point about Jones losing his leverage by vacating the light heavyweight title. Yet, Jones vs. Ngannou for the heavyweight title would be one of the biggest fights of all-time, the hope was the UFC would pay up for it. As of right now, however, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Do you agree with Rashad Evans that Jon Jones is doing things backward in his attempt to negotiate with the UFC?