The Ariel Helwani Show<\/a>. \u201cJon Jones has been with this organisation for how long? Jon Jones has been the champion since he was 23, which is 15 years. Over 15 years? If there is somebody that deserves something nowadays, like just even to pay him tribute, it\u2019s Jon Jones.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cJon Jones needs to get paid, maybe not only for the fight that he\u2019s fighting, but for what he has done for the sport. For where he has taken the sport,\u201d Ngannou added. \u201cAren\u2019t they out there bragging that he\u2019s the GOAT? Man, if the GOAT is not respected, then who should we respect? I worry if the GOAT is being treated like that. I truly worry if that\u2019s how they treat the GOAT, then those who are not the GOAT, I don\u2019t know, whatever they are, imagine what they are going through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones later acknowledged the comments, writing: \u201cI appreciate you advocating for me, Francis,\u201d he said, according to his Instagram story.<\/p>\n
Discussions over Jones\u2019 future remain unresolved, with no official announcement regarding his next fight as negotiations with the UFC continue. The former two-division champion had previously stated that he was retired from active competition.<\/p>\n
Ngannou, meanwhile, is preparing for his next bout after signing with Most Valuable Promotions, where he is scheduled to face Philipe Lins on an upcoming card headlined by Ronda Rousey against Gina Carano in California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jon Jones has received public backing from the man he succeeded as UFC heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou, amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-565545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}