Exclusive interview with Teddy Atlas: Jon Jones is holding the heavyweight title hostage

Renowned boxing trainer and MMA analyst Teddy Atlas has weighed in on the state of MMA and has backed Tom Aspinall’s corner as he claimed Jon Jones is holding the UFC heavyweight title and division hostage.

Atlas also expressed an interest in training a fighter again and locked his sights on Francis Ngannou, whilst giving advice to former Manchester United footballer Patrice Evra on his first MMA fight in the PFL.

Speaking to Slingo, Atlas said:

• Jon Jones is holding the heavyweight title ‘hostage’
• Conor McGregor was pioneer like Muhammad Ali
• My warning to Patrice Evra – you better get the right opponent 
• Weight won’t be the deciding factor when Islam Makhachev faces Jack Della Maddalena

Exclusive interview with Teddy Atlas: Jon Jones is holding the heavyweight title hostage, Conor McGregor was a pioneer like Muhammad Ali and Francis Ngannou is the type of fighter I’d like to train

Jon Jones is holding the heavyweight title ‘hostage’

Jon Jones has been inactive in spots in his career. There’s no doubt about it. And you could say, well, now you are keeping the title hostage. Yeah, I’ll use a strong word, because that’s where you’re going. And again, I think there’s two different things here. 

One is personally as a competitor, as a champion. That word invokes more than just the ability to fight. It invokes how you behave, how you carry yourself, what you believe in.

And he’s a champion. I believe he’s a real champion. He always has been. He always behaves like one, so I think that you do have a personal obligation to [behave like a champion and ] kind of deal with that.

Then [you have to] deal with what comes with being a champion – you gotta give someone else a chance to get what you had a chance to get within a certain period. 

But then comes the other thing. What are the rules? What are the enforcements? What are the mechanisms in place in this sport, in this business? 

What are the rules and are they being enforced? And if they’re not being enforced. And they’re not being obliged by. They’re not being  lived up to, or, paid attention to.

Then you know what the repercussions are. There has to be an enforcement part of those rules. You can’t have rules if there’s no enforcement of those rules, I mean, what’s the sense of having rules?

I would think that a guy who’s been that successful that’s done it his way has done it step by step. He didn’t rush into anything.

To make sure everything was in place to make sure when he opened the doors, people were gonna come and stay, not come and leave. I think that’s probably part of it.

I would guess that when he’s gonna do his first foray into boxing, everyone’s gonna be looking, and I think that he probably wants to make sure that he knows what foot he’s stepping in there with. 

And that it’s his best step, his best foot, I know that, most people say ‘but hey Crawford-Canelo, it doesn’t get bigger’ but that doesn’t mean that it’s comfortable for him. That doesn’t mean that a guy who again has this reputation in his sport.

I’m sure he has ideas of what he wants in place before he has his coming out party, I’m sure that he’s thinking all right. I need other things in place down the road for my venture into boxing to be successful beyond one big night.

Conor McGregor was pioneer like Muhammad Ali

Conor McGregor has earned the right to come back because he was a pioneer in the UFC, there’s not many pioneers out there. When you’re a pioneer you deserve the right to call it a day when you call it a day, you deserve the right to be given more leeway than someone else.

There’s a guy that was a pioneer in making people money, a lot like Muhammad Ali. When Ali, with boxing, started making more money, he broke that barrier. In the UFC people started making more money when Conor McGregor came along and he broke that barrier, and people are benefiting. 

Fighters are benefiting from it, and aside from that, he was maybe the greatest promoter we ever saw, one of the greatest promoters we ever saw. But he was a hell of a fighter.

Francis Ngannou is the type of fighter I’d like to train

I found Francis Ngannou to be very smart, obviously very physical; very gifted, very big, very strong, and he was born with power. He’s athletic and he was very smart,

They reached out to me about potentially training him for the Tyson Fury fight and it didn’t work out. We didn’t get together, but he’s a guy that is intelligent. You have to have somebody who has a form of intelligence. They didn’t have to go to college, they didn’t have to go to school. But they have to be intelligent and they have to want to learn. The ego has to be in check.

So Ngannou was the kind of guy who physically had gifts and he’s intelligent. Teachers, you look for something to teach. Sculptors want a good piece of clay that you can move and mold into something special, and a part of that is having the kind of talent that Ngannou has, and the kind of intelligence that he brings with it.

My warning to Patrice Evra – you better get the right opponent 

I hope Patrica Evra got the right opponent. I’m not kidding, but I’m serious, at 44 years old, coming from soccer. I’m sure he’s a great athlete. But to go into MMA . You have the right opponent. 

I could get a guy down the street who’s driving an ice cream truck. I could get him a fight, and he [Evra] would be successful not because ice cream made him a great fighter, but because I would get the right opponent. 

I don’t know much about this guy other than what you just laid out, but I can guarantee you he better get the right opponent.

Weight won’t be the deciding factor when Islam Makhachev faces Jack Della Maddalena

If Islam Makhachev loses to Jack Della Maddalena, I think it’ll be because Jack was able to force it into being more of a striking fight than anything else. And his takedown defense was good enough, like it was in his last fight, the one he won the title with. 

If he can fight his fight—he’s very good at striking. And as the taller man, if he can control that geography, that gives him an edge to use his physical attributes in those ways. If he can fight that fight, I don’t think weight will come into play.

It’ll come down to what I just talked about, the greatness inside the guy. The mental ability to fight their fight. The mental endurance and constitution to get through what they have to get through, which is what these guys always do. They always find a way. The great ones find a way