Jon Jones explains why he wants to fight Brock Lesnar rather than Stipe Miocic

Following his third round knockout against longtime rival Daniel Cormier on Saturday night, Jon Jones wasted no time calling out former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar for a super fight he hopes to pursue in the near future.

Jones has long teased a move to heavyweight throughout his career, but the prospect of facing a superstar like Lesnar may finally be the catalyst he needs to move up to a new division after ruling light heavyweight for the past six-plus years.

Jones also knows that his own star power combined with Lesnar’s would make for a huge event, which would then pay both of the fighters an obscene amount of money based on pay-per-view revenue for the fight.

“I think it’s about time for me to be involved in a super fight,” Jones said about facing Lesnar at the UFC 214 post fight press conference. “I think that’s what the fans really want to see is me challenge myself against a heavyweight and why not do it against the biggest and most scary heavyweights in UFC history in Brock Lesnar.

“He brings a tremendous following and I just think it would be so great for the sport of MMA.”

Of course Lesnar is a bruising fighter who would have a huge size advantage over Jones while routinely cutting down to make the 265-pound limit to compete at heavyweight. On the other hand, Jones stated on Saturday night that he walked into the Octagon at 215 pounds, which is the lightest he’s been in several years.

That being said, Lesnar has only fought once in nearly five years after he returned to defeat Mark Hunt last July and that result was later overturned when he tested positive for a banned substance. There’s no doubt Lesnar is a hulking heavyweight with a huge name behind him, but it’s impossible to know where he would rank in the division if he returned to compete full time.

Meanwhile as Lesnar continues to compete in professional wrestling as part of the WWE roster, Stipe Miocic has been ruling the heavyweight division for more than a year with a pair of title defenses under his belt already including a first round knockout over Junior dos Santos in May.

Miocic has a chance to break the all time record for heavyweight title defenses in his next fight and he might be one of the few fighters on the UFC roster who could likely be favored to win a matchup with Jones.

As much as Jones enjoys the idea of competing for a second world title, he says right now the matchup that makes the most sense to him is against somebody like Lesnar, who is very dangerous but also brings another major intangible to the table…

Lesnar is a superstar where Miocic is not.

“I feel like if I was to take a fight at heavyweight it would be against a person me and my coaches have felt would be just a perfect matchup for me. Right now, Stipe’s looking extremely impressive and I believe we can get an extremely talented big guy versus and an extremely talented little guy, I mean a lot of the cards are in his favor. At the same time, I fear no man but I strike for a reason when I strike and I feel like Stipe is relatively unknown to the general public. It wouldn’t even be a real super fight in my opinion,” Jones explained. “I think the MMA fans would be really excited about it but the general public wouldn’t care about that fight.

“Most people don’t really know who he is, with all due respect to him. So if I’m going to sacrifice being the smaller guy, I think stylistically Brock would be a fight that makes way more sense and the payday would be tremendous and what it would do for our sport would be tremendous. A much greater impact so for many reasons a Brock Lesnar fight makes more sense to me.”

For now, Jones will continue to celebrate his win at UFC 214 while awaiting word on his next fight. Lesnar wouldn’t be eligible to return to action until early 2018 based on his suspension and that’s assuming he re-enters the drug testing pool with USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) in the near future.

Still, Jones vs. Lesnar would certainly be the biggest fight the UFC could possibly promote without having a certain lightweight named Conor McGregor involved.