Jon Jones has an interesting take on fighters carrying their chamionship belts to the octagon and revealed that it’s something he won’t ever consider.
“I would never bring my belt out to the cage,” Jones told reporters from MMA Fighting at last week’s The Time is Now event.
The light heavyweight champion admitted that he reached an extra level of motivation when he saw Mauricio “Shogun” Rua’s brother, Murilo, with the belt in his hands before Jones’ title-winning fight in 2011.
The pound-for-pound king said: “When I fought Shogun, his brother Ninja Rua brought the belt out to the cage
“And when I was in the cage and I saw Ninja was holding the belt over Shogun, I remember feeling this feeling in my heart that there was nothing in the Octagon that could happen where I wouldn’t leave without that belt. It reminded me why I was there, what I was there for.”
Jones made Rua who, at that point was a fear-inducing light heavyweight, look decidedly average on the night and finished him in the third.
“I’m watching Shogun, and then I just see that belt and all my nervousness went away,” Jones said.
“Everything went away. I was like, ‘whoa, the belt is right there. I can view this. It’s so close. I’m probably going home with the belt.’ I just became superhuman after that and that’s probably why Shogun lost so much. That belt, I got to see it right before the fight. You dangled it over me.”
Jones takes to the octagon next at UFC 182 on January 3 when he meets Daniel Cormier, a man with whom he has changed trash-talk barbs for months, but the champion will be flashing his belt on the walk to the cage.
‘Bones’ added: “For the contender, just to see that right before the match?
“It’s like drinking a gallon of water right before walking into the desert, you know what I mean?”
