Manager says issues with Dana White, Jon Jones ‘will get resolved’

In the lead up to UFC 214, Dana White revealed to ESPN that he had not spoken to Jon Jones since his 11th-hour withdrawal from UFC 200 due to a potential USADA violation.

Prior to the UFC 214 press conference call last Wednesday, Jones underlined that he still has some outstanding issues with the UFC president.

“I feel like he’s shown me his true colors, and now I have no desire to pretend like he cares about me or that we’re friends,” he said.

Following Jones’ third-round dispatch of Daniel Cormier on Saturday night, White praised the newly crowned champion’s performance as “incredible” in a backstage interview with the UFC.

Although there have been no inroads made to get the pair back on terms as of yet, the light heavyweight champion’s manager, Malki Kawa, claimed that the outstanding issues between the two will get worked out.

“All of that will get resolved in time,” Kawa told Ariel Helwani on the latest episode of The MMA Hour.

“I actually sat down with Dana after the fight and dealt with Demetrious Johnson. It’s slowly taking shape as well there and that (Jones) will be taken care of also.”

Kawa does not believe that Jones will suffer any repercussions on the back of his comments about White and believes the champion’s callout of Brock Lesnar has shown that he is still willing to work with the UFC.

“I’ll tell you one thing about Jon, the way he runs his business and the way he operates — nobody can make him do anything that he doesn’t want to do,” he said.

“That (UFC not pushing Jones) won’t happen. You see what he did after the fight, he called out Brock Lesnar and he probably has a lot of hurdles (to get over) before he can make this happen.

“(Jon) let (UFC) know that this is what I want to do next. Hopefully, they will get onto that and try to make it happen.”

Kawa believes that getting White and Jones back on track is a matter of the two sitting down together and talking things out.

“It will all be resolved. It’s not as bad as it seems. Obviously, he went through a lot, and we expected some stuff from Dana,” Kawa said.

“Dana has his own ideas on some of this stuff. It’s just a matter of sitting in a room and hashing these things out. I did it with Dana and DJ on Saturday. I’ll do that with Jon and Dana and some point if they want to and we’ll see if we can get it resolved.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said.