Con game: MMA fighters use a variety of tricks to gain fight-night confidence

In the fall of 2009, I was sitting in the kitchen of the small house Jon Jones and his girlfriend rented in Ithaca, N.Y..

I was listening to him lay out a plan for all the spectacular violence he planned to visit upon Matt Hamill just a few months la…

In the fall of 2009, I was sitting in the kitchen of the small house Jon Jones and his girlfriend rented in Ithaca, N.Y..

I was listening to him lay out a plan for all the spectacular violence he planned to visit upon Matt Hamill just a few months later.

Jones was only three fights into his UFC career at the time, and still less than two years into his MMA career as a whole, but even then the future champion was big on mental preparation, visualization, all that.