MMA: Sticks and Stones, Jonny 'Bones' Jones Needs To Shut His Mouth

Twitter is the best thing to happen to sports in a long time. Most athletes use it as a tool to promote themselves and connect with their fans.

Guys like Shaq, Chad 'The Artist Formerly Known As OchoCinco' Johnson, and Miguel Torres are great Tweeters because they're funny, insightful, and use it for fun. If you have a Twitter account, I'd recommend hitting that 'follow' button for all of these guys.

I can't say the same about Jon Jones. For a man who obviously wants to be liked and respected as a mixed martial artist, Mr. Jones has been engaging in some verbal assults as of late. He first called out Thiago Silva for being disrespectful to Brandon Vera during Silva's victory at UFC 125, where Silva hit his opponent with several open hand slaps.

"Wow that slapping was so disrespectful.. id love to give him a slap in the face"

Then earlier this week 'Bones' continued his fighter-bashing, taking a seemingly harmless tweet from Aaron Simpson, a teammate of his UFC 126 opponent Ryan Bader, and going after Simpson hard.

Simpson tweeted, "I don't think jon jones has any idea what he is getting into with Bader. I hope he is up for it." Jones' reply: "Didn't you lose your last 2 fights? Please don't piss me off, I actually have respect for Ryan. Don't you have a fight scheduled?"

Jones then put the nail in the coffin, leaving one last message for Simpson.

"Focus on yourself instead of weather I'm ready or not? Are you familiar with the strike policy in baseball?"

I gotta hand it to him, 'Angry Jonny' can talk some trash, but does he really need to?

Jones has a chance to be one of the greatest fighters in the world and with a young sport like MMA, which already has a bad reputation with a lot of prominent figures in the media, we need the future stars of the sport to be role models.

I don't mind trash talk and I love to see a fighter as passionate about the sport as Jones is. But as a fan that wants to see the sport grow, it kills me to see one of the brightest stars we have saying things that make him look so immature.

I love 'Bones' as a fighter, and I do think he is a good person, but for the sake of MMA, Mr. Jones, will you please shut your mouth?