The scary part is, this could just be the beginning.
Jon Jones is, without doubt or cohesive argument, the best fighter in the UFC.
Being out of the game for a year has done little to dull the perception that ‘Bones’ is the fighter of his generation.
Whilst he was suspended from the promotion, Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor threatened to touch his coat-tails only to be spectacularly de-railed.
Jones is preparing to face Ovince Saint Preux at UFC 197, on April 23, after light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier pulled out of a planned title bout with injury. Jones will now have to deal with OSP before getting the chance the reclaim the belt he was forced to give up.
Call to fight Jon Jones resulted in rapid change of dinner plans for Ovince Saint Preux https://t.co/A5vBgjPIil
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 4, 2016
Jones has only one defeat in his 22 fight professional career and that was due to a disqualification for illegal elbows on Matt Hamill in a fight he was dominating.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Jones reveals just how little he trained for some of his 21 MMA victories:
“Pretty much my whole career I wasn’t living like a champ. Fighters that look up to me would go out with me on weekends and see me get blackout wasted, weeks before a fight. Then they think, ‘Jon Jones can do it. Maybe I can.’
“It would be like Kobe Bryant taking a rookie out and getting blackout drunk the night before a game, then going out there and dropping 30 points the next day,” he continues. “That would lead somebody down the wrong path of thinking. That was the same thing I was doing.”
Jones has had numerous run-ins with the law in recent years with a 2015 hit-and-run incident, and subsequent arrest, the low point.
The 28-year-old has vowed to devote himself to reclaiming his belt and has even hinted at a move up to the heavyweight division. One of the key changes Jones has made has been to his gym routine.
Jones is now deep into a powerlifting regime and has brought in separate grappling and conditioning coaches for the first time.
He has also hired a nutritionist to cook meals and help him cut weight as fight weeks approach.
Another change has seen Jones become a leader, and mentor, of shorts to fighters at his Jackson-Wink gym. Jones says:
“I’m not officially team captain, but to a lot of guys in here, I’m their captain. They see me doing the right things and working my ass off.
“A lot of the guys used to see me and envy the fact I could party and still win. I knew the guys who had a little hate in their blood, like, ‘This motherfucker got everything I want as a fighter, and he’s coming to practice high and shit.’
“Those guys now, they got nothing to say. It’s not that they hated me; they hated what I got away with.”
Jones is not taking short cuts any more.
As Rolling Stone writer Mike Bohn remarks, Jones’ potential is “frightening”. Watch out.
