Craig Jones recently explained why he turned down a match against Gordon Ryan at the UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3.
Over the past several weeks, former Danaher Death Squad teammates Craig Jones and Gordon Ryan have been going back and forth over social media.
Spurred on by the rivalry between Ryan and Jones’ B-Team co-founder Nick Rodriguez, the feud seemed to hit a fever pitch in February and March with Jones posting several comedic videos at Ryan’s expense. Ryan, meanwhile, fired back in his own way, calling Jones a “coward” and announcing that the Australian had turned down a match with Ryan.
Recently, on the first episode of Jones’ new show “The El Segundo Podcast,” the two-time ADCC silver medalist admitted that he had declined a recent match with Ryan and explained why.
Why Craig Jones turned down Gordon Ryan at the UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3
According to Jones, he was offered a match against Ryan roughly six weeks before last December’s UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3.
Given the amount of time to prepare, Jones said he would do a 15-minute match. However, he says, Ryan refused to compete in any match less than 25 minutes. That brought the negotiations to a standstill, but Jones says he would be interested in a longer match against Ryan at some point in the future.
Jones said:
“It was only five, six weeks out from the event and they called me to face Gordon. And they were like what ruleset do you want to do? And I’m like, ‘well it’s six weeks away, can we do 15 minutes? You want me to face a guy who’s bigger than me that prefers longer matches on six weeks’ notice.’
“And they’re like ‘okay, we’ll talk to Gordon.’ They come back, Gordon’s like ‘25 minutes or nothing.’
“I’m just like we can do that later, but we’re not gonna do that in six weeks. At least meet in the middle here.”
Ultimately, Ryan was booked against Vinny Magalhaes in the main event of the UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3. But when Magalhaes withdrew on late notice due to a poor weight cut, Nick Rodriguez stepped in to take on Ryan in a 20-minute EBI-rules match that Ryan won by way of control time in the overtime periods.
Whether it’s a 15-minute match or something longer, a showdown between the former teammates seems likely to happen some time in the near future.
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