Jones claims UFC gave Gustafsson easy fight with Lil Nog to protect rematch

By Evan Stoumbelis

UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones sounded off to MMAFighting about the situation involving the UFC’s matchmaking decision to have Alexander Gustafsson fight Antonio ‘Lil Nog’ Nogueira.

Jones described his reaction to hearing the matchup to MMAFighting in an interview:

“I was like ‘Really? You want him to have the rematch that bad?’ No disrespect to Nogueira, but let’s see Gustafsson versus Cormier. It makes so much sense. Me, Cormier, Gustafsson and Teixeira, the top four guys in the division. Let’s put us all in a little round-robin pool and see who is the toughest out of us four. Why throw Little Nog into the picture? But whatever, I’m gonna fight the toughest one anyway.”

Nogueira pulled out of the fight with Alexander Gustafsson this past week due to a back injury, leaving the Swedish title contender without an opponent. Jones offered his advice on how to fix this problem.

“I wanna see [Gustafsson] fight a top contender. Seems like these guys are not really having the toughest time to get to the belt. Teixeira goes from Bader to a championship fight. Gustafsson went from Shogun to a championship fight. I feel like they save all the dogs for me and they just give the toughest guys the easiest match-ups to get to a title shot. Let’s see some of these top contenders fight each other.”

With Daniel Cormier’s recent win over Roy ‘Big Country’ Nelson, he will officially be moving down to 205 in his next bout, which is sure to stir up the UFC’s light-heavyweight division’s title picture.