Jon Jones wants to make peace with Daniel Cormier. He announced it on the YouTube channel of the pizza company he just signed on to promote, which makes it read like an ad.
In a video posted to the Prince St. Pizza channel on October 21, Jones said Cormier "would have been considered one of the greatest fighters, if not the greatest fighter of all time" had they not shared an era. Warm stuff. Then came the pitch: "I'll invite you out here to Baton Rouge. I'll fly you out. We can have pizza. We can talk... And we can bury the hatchet." He laid out the plan in plain terms: "maybe we can do a meet-and-greet for the fans here."
A meet-and-greet for the fans, at the restaurant he's a partner in, the one whose Baton Rouge location opened this fall, whose grand opening on October 9 he was crowing about weeks ago when he bragged that "3000 customers" showed up. At that same opening, mid-pizza-eating-challenge, he joked, "I've never wanted to see Daniel Cormier more than I want to see him right now. Tag in, brother." The reconciliation and the sales funnel are the same event. "Bury the hatchet" is a line on a promo reel.
If this were the first time, you could take it at face value as a guy trying to grow up in public. This is at least his third attempt. In 2023 he tweeted that "the beef is over" and that he forgave Cormier. Earlier this year the two coached against each other on a reality series and the thaw seemed real, right up until a poolside near-brawl in March and Jones turning down a wrestling-match offer with a flat "You've had your chance." Then in July, Cormier went on record furious, denying Jones's claim that they'd privately agreed the rivalry was just business. "That just didn't happen," he said. "This is not a conversation that Jon and I had." And the kicker: "I think Jon's crazy."
That was three months before the pizza invite. Cormier already answered this, angrily and on the record. Jones heard it, waited a quarter of a year, and floated the exact same gesture again, this time with a restaurant launch riding on it. He's a man who needs the yes on camera, and he keeps asking the same question in different wrapping until he gets it.
The cleanest tell is how Jones operates everywhere else. This is the fighter who, by his own coach's account, will never take a short-notice fight because he needs total control of every variable, the guy UFC 151 got cancelled over when he declined Chael Sonnen on eight days' notice. Total control is the brand. So of course the peace summit sits on his turf, his flight, his city, his pizza shop, his timeline. Cormier is invited to show up and bless all of it.
And Jones is asking Cormier, of all people, to let bygones be bygones. These are the same two fights Jones poisoned. He failed a drug test for the anabolic steroid Turinabol around UFC 214 in 2017, the knockout win that got overturned to a no contest, and served a fifteen-month suspension for it. He's admitted to hiding from a sample collector at his own gym, calling that one a state commission test rather than a USADA test. A failed drug test rewrote part of that rivalry's history. "Bury the hatchet" is a big ask from the person holding the hatchet.
Maybe the pizza jab is just banter, a grown man wanting to squash a decade of hate over a slice. But a real olive branch doesn't need a YouTube channel and a grand-opening cycle. A phone call works. So does a private message. Jones has had years and multiple chances to do this quietly, and every time he's chosen the version with an audience, now the version with a cash register behind it.
As of October 23, Cormier hasn't said a word about the Baton Rouge invite. He doesn't owe one. He already gave his answer in July, and nothing about Jones routing the next attempt through a pizza brand should change it. Until Cormier actually walks into that restaurant, it's marketing with Daniel Cormier's name used as the hook, built that way on purpose.
