Morning Report: Jon Jones says his beef with Rashad Evans is over but he couldn’t trust him to be a training partner

Jon Jones is willing to build bridges between himself and Rashad Evans, but it seems that training together is a bridge too far.

Four years ago yesterday, Jon Jones and Rashad Evans stepped inside the cage to settle a feud years in the making, and on the line was the UFC light heavyweight championship.

The back story was promotional gold. Jones and Evans had been training partners at the legendary Jackson-Winklejohn camp in Albuquerque, N.M.. Jones was the upstart novice to MMA with worlds of potential; Evans was the former champion and still highly ranked competitor trying to get back to the belt he lost to Lyoto Machida. The two were friends and teammates, the term ‘brother’ was thrown around. Then Jones won the title, and their relationship deteriorated. They fought at UFC 145 in 2012 with Jones winning convincingly.

Since then, Evans has had a rough go of it in the cage. He is 2-3 in his last 5 fights and last weekend he was knocked out in the first round by Glover Teixeira in the main event of UFC on Fox 19. After the loss, Evans was noticeably emotional and the talk began in earnest about whether Evans would ever fight again.

Considering their rivalry, and Jones’s proclivity for social media gaffes, one might have expected Jones to do something he couldn’t do to Evans when they fought for the title, and kick Evans when he’s down. But on the contrary, after Evans’s loss to Teixeira Jones offered encouragement to his former rival. On Twitter, he commented that he felt bad for Evans losing in the manner that he did. He also posted to Instagram saying calling Evans a “legend” and telling him to keep his “head up” in a post that has since been deleted.

In light of his recent outspoken support of Evans, at the UFC 197 media day scrum Jones was asked him if he still held any animosity towards his former rival.

“I think it’s safe to say my beef with Rashad is gone. You know I won that fight when we fought so if anyone were to have hurt feelings I would imagine it would be him. Me and Rashad had really great moments before our drama started and you know those moments, I think me and him will both remember those good times,” Jones said.

If the beef is completely gone, the question then becomes could the two fighters mend fences enough to become friends again? What about training partners? Unlikely.

“As far as Rashad coming down to Jackson’s, I think he’d be a tremendous training partner but at the same time I think he’s a little too close to Anthony Johnson. I think his loyalty will always be with Anthony over me and I don’t know how much I could trust him to be a training partner in the future,” Jones said.

Jones fights Ovince Saint Preux for the interim UFC light heavyweight championship this Saturday at UFC 197 in Las Vegas, Nev.

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