Gable Steveson has just dropped a bombshell about his match with Craig Jones, as he claims that Jones actually asked him to take a dive and lose on purpose. The match never came to fruition of course, but it was originally booked as the main event superfight for CJI 2. It was going to be one of the biggest crossover matches in BJJ history and definitely the biggest in recent memory but unfortunately, it fell apart at the very last minute. With less than a week left to go before the event, it was thrown into disarray when Steveson withdrew from the match with an injured toe.
It wasn’t just a simple case of an injured competitor pulled out though, as there was an added layer of complexity to this incident. Steveson made his professional MMA debut just two weeks after CJI 2 and he looked phenomenal in it, so clearly his injury was no longer effecting him to any significant degree. This left some fans and even Jones himself questioning the legitimacy of Steveson’s injury, and whether he simply prioritised his MMA career instead. The plot has thickened with this latest interview that Steveson has done with Ariel Helwani though, as he started to share his side of the story:
“That match came about in February, the match was gonna happen. You know, we met up a few times, everything was all good. Long story short, (there was) a couple of funky stipulations around there that we didn’t agree upon, they wanted to keep it, I got turf toe and wasn’t there.”
Helwani then pressed Gable Steveson to be more specific about the stipulations he was referencing and when he started to hint thaf he was asked to take a dive against Craig Jones, Helwani pushed even further until he got something more concrete from him:
“There was a look in the eye of saying ‘hey, I’m gonna retire after this match. I don’t wanna take this loss, can you do this for me?’ and we’ll leave it as that.”
Helwani even took care to pinpoint exactly what Steveson was talking about, asking him directly if he was asked to lose to Jones on purpose and Steveson confirmed that he was.
The full interview with Gable Steveson where he accuses Craig Jones of asking him to take a dive in the match against him was shared to the official YouTube channel of the Ariel Helwani Show:
