Coach: Jones ‘As Irrelevant As TJ Dillashaw’

Who is the greatest light heavyweight on the planet?

According to Eugene Bareman, head coach for UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, it’s current 205-pound titleholder Jan Blachowicz, who captured the vacant crown when Jon Jones moved up to heavyweight.

“Once you cheat, Jon Jones is about as irrelevant as TJ Dillashaw,” Bareman told Submission Radio. “It’s like, to me they don’t exist. Like, yeah, is anything that TJ Dillashaw did in the past relevant now that he’s cheated? No. It’s not any different for Jon Jones. So, you can’t talk to me about Jon Jones. I have a particular opinion, and that isn’t shared by the rest of the world. So, at the moment the greatest 205-er is Jan Błachowicz. There’s no one else. There’s no one else as great as him.”

Jones was suspended for the picogram fiasco following his second dance with Daniel Cormier while Dillashaw served time for his EPO bust a couple of years later. To date, Blachowicz hasn’t tested positive for anything but “Polish Power” since his UFC debut.

I’m not sure why Bareman claims Jones is irrelevant while also campaigning to keep Adesanya’s fight against “Bones” on the table for later this year. Perhaps it’s because Jones “understands where the money is.”

Or not.

“Give it up coach, we’ve all seen your cards, your boy has almost no takedown defense or offense off his back,” Jones wrote on Twitter. “Now you’re just being a cloud trout, if you would honestly send him in there against a 260-pound wrestler after that last performance, you don’t care about his well being.”

Adesanya has returned to middleweight after losing to Blachowicz at UFC 259.