Anyone in their right mind should have been stoked to see Mauricio “Shogun” Rua vs. Rashad Evans, but it seems like ever since Jon Jones came into the equation, the hype’s gone up another level. It makes sense of course, as just like thousands of others, we too quickly jumped on the “Bones” bandwagon after seeing what kind of glorious violence he’s capable of.
Despite the fact that this Saturday’s bout marks the first time the 23 year-old phenomenon will fight for the title, Jones has been taking it in stride, while remaining extremely confident about his chances. So, just how is the rising light-heavy planning on dismantling the champ? Speaking to ESPN, (thanks to MMA Fighting for the quote) Jones stated:
“I was a Greco-Roman All-American, and the clinch is such a huge part of combat sport,” Jones said. “If you look at Muay Thai matches, if you look at your traditional boxing, the clinch is huge. It’s a natural instinct for people to clinch when they’re in a bad situation. And that’s one of my main strengths. My takedowns from the clinch are very powerful, my knees from the clinch are very powerful, and I think that can be a huge mismatch that I can exploit in this fight.”
Yes, right about now you might recall Jones tossing opponents through the air like they were unsuspecting beach balls, and there’s little question he could do some serious damage from that position. That said, we are talking about Shogun, a man who reduced “Rampage” Jackson to a pile of broken human with some serious, serious knees. Guess we’ll see huh?
To put some money down on the fight head here.