(Rashad Evans: Friend to the white man.)

Look, we’ll be the first to admit that this business about Rashad Evans calling Jon Jones a fake ass white boy via text message is pretty damn silly. The only reason we felt the photo was worth posting on this site is because Evans originally denied sending it. Do I think the “white boy” line should be characterized as “racist,” or as an insult to white people? No, not at all — although the tradition of one black fighter questioning a rival’s blackness is one of the oldest tricks in combat sports, and it’s slightly disappointing that Rashad stooped to that level.

Now that the photo has spread around the Internet, Evans was forced to admit its authenticity, which he did on the latest episode of MMA Weekly radio. Evans offered an apology to anybody who he might have offended, but also used the situation as an opportunity to question Jones’s maturity. The quotes (which start around the 1:23:00 mark of the show) are below:

“Yeah I did say it to him, but he also said a lot of things to me that — I didn’t want to put his texts out there. We were arguing, I said a lot of things, he did, back and forth, but…I did call him a fake-ass white boy. I did. But I don’t think being a white boy is anything bad; if people took offense of being a white boy, then they must not think [audio unclear] about being white. It’s an insult to him, because of course he’s not white, so you can see where the insult comes in. That’s the extent to the insult right there. It’s not anything against white people…he’s black, and I called him white. So therefore, as any normal black person, that would infuriate him, which it did. And it showed that it made him mad because he posted it on the Internet.

First of all, what kind of move is that, anyway? That’s like high school — not even high school, that’s like grade school. ‘Look what Rashad said to me, look everyone, look, can you believe he said this to me?’ Like, seriously dude…what am I gonna do, tell my mom because Jon Jones said that he would destroy me and said a bunch of mean things to me, I’m gonna call my mother up? How old — I mean, what’s the mindset here? If I offended anybody for calling Jon Jones a fake-ass white boy, I deeply do apologize, but I don’t have a problem with white people. Some of my best friends are white…it was an insult, and I called him white because, to be a black person and be called something that you’re not is very offensive.”

Like I said, I’m willing to give Rashad the benefit of the doubt here; nobody should be getting worked up over this. But it’s a little disingenuous for Evans to say that he was just trying to offend Jones by calling him something that he’s not. (As if calling him a “postal worker” or a “turtle” would have the same infuriating effect on Jones.) Because that’s bullshit, obviously. The reality is, “white boy” has certain connotations when lobbed from one African American to another. Rashad could have called Jon Jones anything in the world, and he went with “white boy.” Did he mean that Jones was weak? A punk? A geek? A snitch? Because he definitely meant something.