Tyson Fury rips ‘little s***bag’ Joe Rogan for starting ‘absolutely ridiculous’ debate over Jon Jones
Tyson Fury has a bone to pick with Joe Rogan.
Fury has been a fixture of the MMA news cycle since late May, when he responded to a segment on Rogan’s popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience by pouring gasoline onto the flames of an ongoing debate regarding him and UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones. In the segment, Rogan confidently predicted that Jones would handle business if he and Fury were ever locked in a room together and only one man was allowed to leave.
Rogan’s comments prompted a profane retort from Fury and ignited a fiery back-and-forth between Fury and Jones. Even former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou and UFC president Dana White jumped into the fray, with the latter repeatedly lobbying in interviews to book a fight between Jones and Fury to settle the matter.
For Fury, the entire discussion has seemingly jumped the shark.
“To be honest with you, all this talk of a me and Jon Jones fighting in a cage is absolutely ridiculous,” Fury said at a recent Q&A session in Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA Gym in Phuket, Thailand, as reported by Bloody Elbow. “Like, I’m the lineal world heavyweight champion. The man who beat the man going back to John L. Sullivan. Why would I even dream of going in a cage and wrestling and all that? It’s not my thing.
“It was actually Joe Rogan, little s***bag, who [started this]. Just out of the blue, there was no talk of me or Jon even fighting. Jon’s a great guy, probably the GOAT of MMA. [Rogan] said, ‘Oh, if Tyson Fury goes in a room with Jon Jones he’s going to get absolutely smashed to bits.’ Like, if someone goes in the room with me and it’s no holds barred, you’re going to have to kill me to stop me.”
“He didn’t say an MMA fight or a boxing fight, he said go in a room together and Tyson Fury’s not walking out,” Fury added. “So I don’t know where it all started and Jon said something and I said something and we’ve being going back and forward.
“There was never talk of me saying I was going to go in a cage with Jon Jones and go in there and get my arm snapped off. No way. The thing was, I offered Jon, ‘You want to walk in a boxing ring and make some real money, then come and fight me.’ But zero chance of me going in an MMA game and rolling around and all that. Zero.”
Earlier this month, Fury claimed in a live Twitter Space that the UFC had already sent him a formal offer for a “hybrid rules fight” with Jones.
Jones isn’t the first UFC heavyweight champion to be linked to Fury, however. The lineal boxing king and Ngannou have also gone back and forth over a potential superfight for years, with Ngannou even making a surprise appearance in the ring alongside Fury in April 2022 following Fury’s win over Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium. Ngannou’s desire to box a heavyweight star was actually one of the tipping points that led to his exit from the UFC. Despite that newfound freedom, a bout between Ngannou and Fury has not materialized.
In his Q&A, Fury addressed Ngannou as well — and pointed out the long history boxers have of failing miserably when trying to transition over to an MMA fight with MMA rules.
“I’ve offered to fight Ngannou in a cage under boxing rules with four ounce gloves on and guess what’s happened? His a**hole fell out,” Fury said.
“Obviously my forte is not taking people down and all that sort of stuff, it’s different for me. It’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to fly a jet plane.’ I don’t know how to fly a jet plane, I have no idea. In a stand-up sport, in punching combat, whether it’s in a cage, in a phone box, whatever it’s going to be, if they want to do that, then no problem. But definitely not, I’m not going into any MMA fights.”
“It doesn’t fare well for boxers,” Fury added. “I’ve only ever known one boxer to win, and that’s Ray Mercer when he knocked out Tim Sylvia with one punch, and that was it. All the rest of them, James Toney got done by Randy Couture, quite a few of them have been done quite quickly. Because a boxer’s thing is, he stands up and he stands side-on [stance] and a shoot takes them down and [then the MMA fighter can] punch them up.
“So yeah, it won’t be something that I’m interested in, at all. But if them lads want to come over into my boxing world, then they are more than welcome.”