UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones recently found himself at the center of an unexpected privacy breach when footage surfaced showing him discussing his hip arthritis with strangers at a bare-knuckle event. A young content creator wearing Meta smart glasses caught the incident, which then became viral.
However, former UFC champion Daniel Cormier, Jones’s longtime rival, isn’t buying the narrative that this was an accidental leak. In a recent video, Cormier suggested that Jones deliberately allowed the information to become public, signaling that his competitive days may be coming to an end.
“It’s very easy to tell if you’re being recorded with the Meta glasses… They got like a white light on the side of the glasses the moment they start recording. How could he have missed that?” Cormier questioned. “So I believe that information like that, that if it’s that close to the vest, you don’t share it with a random either.”
Cormier’s skepticism runs deeper than just the recording itself. He believes the entire situation was orchestrated by Jones to manage public expectations about his career trajectory.
“I don’t know that anything he does isn’t intended to be taken in the way of the video. That it’s taken. I think that Jon Jones knew what he was doing. I think that he wanted people to know that he’s injured. And I think that’s exactly the way that he wanted it to happen,” Cormier stated.
The leaked footage captured Jones explaining his condition in detail. “I have severe arthritis, and most people don’t know that. My left hip is covered in arthritis… My last training camp, dude I went to bed in so much pain. I have a 3 year old,” Jones said in the recording.
When confronted about the leak at the Celebrity Sweat event at Cal Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, Jones expressed frustration about the privacy breach while confirming the information was accurate.
“The kid that leaked that was an absolute as*hole,” Jones told the interviewer. “I was talking to some guys in confidential and he had one of those Meta glasses on like myself and he ended up posting that. That wasn’t for everybody to hear, but that’s how life works.”
Jones went on to acknowledge the toll his athletic career has taken on his body. “It is true. I do have arthritis and I’ve been an athlete my whole entire life and it’s just something that comes with it. I think I started sports in seventh grade. Now I’m almost 40 years old. So it comes with it, but I do it all over again and I feel great,” he explained.
Despite years of back-and-forth about a potential grappling match between the two former champions, Cormier now believes such an event will never materialize. More significantly, he thinks the arthritis revelation represents Jones coming to terms with the end of his competitive career.
“I’ve long said that I didn’t think that Jon Jones was a great athlete… But I think for the first time, I actually believe that he might have some true issues with his hips…. I believe Jon Jones is hurt,” Cormier said. “That was the video that made me believe that John Jones doesn’t have anything left. There will be no wrestling match between him and I.”
Cormier’s assessment suggests a bittersweet conclusion to one of MMA’s most storied rivalries. “So I think that people should now start to get ready. For a day when you don’t have Jones in combat. It’s a sad thing because in real time, you could see him starting to come to accept that all those days are over,” he reflected.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have recently come under scrutiny after reports showed how easily their safeguards can be bypassed, allowing users to disable recording indicators and capture conversations without visible signs.
