Author: Chuck Mindenhall

Cody Garbrandt was installed as an underdog against Marcus Brimage at UFC 182, and that might have seemed fitting. Coming in, Garbrandt was an established underdog by circumstance. Anybody who knew him in his youth would have guessed he was more likely cut out for interrogation lights instead of spotlights. His father was an absentee ne’er-do-well who is currently behind bars in his native Ohio for a take-your-pick litany of crimes he committed. One of his uncles is in the clink, too. Prison was just another place growing up in the Garbrandt family. Even the uncle that raised him, Robert, was familiar with the sentencing process.

And Cody was drifting that way himself. He was kicked out of school for fighting, and was soon selling drugs, getting into trouble. There were no expectations on him other than the most foreboding kind. Cody’s path was either to work in the coalmines, or worse — to become just another Tuscarawas County inmate.

But, before he got there something happened, a shepherd of sorts crossed his path, an intervening angel, and what oddsmakers couldn’t have known three years later was that there was simply no way Garbrandt would lose his fight against Brimage.

Garbrandt, who grew up mean and learned to box early, showed superior movement. He was all footwork and angles, a tatted-up Dominick Cruz-like understudy who got in-and-out before Brimage could find the mark. With a little over 20 seconds to go in the fight, Garbrandt slammed home a left cross, and then a right, a sequence that put Brimage on skates. Garbrandt came forward, and coolly landed another left, and another right, the fight slowing down in front of him as he stood in, the sweet endnotes of a long-held promise, until Brimage’s legs gave out. With ten seconds left in his UFC debut, the referee called the fight.

Garbrandt had won.

In his post-fight speech, he said there was a little boy who’d been battling leukemia, and he was in the building. He said that three-and-a-half years ago he told the boy that he’d make it to the UFC and win, and that the little boy had told him that he would beat leukemia.

The little boy’s name is Maddux Maple. He was in section 216 at the MGM Grand with his family. He was crying tears of joy, because both kept their promise to the other.

Because odds be damned.

*

Cody met Maddux through his brother Zach Garbrandt back in 2011. Maddux, who comes from the Dennison, a small-town in central northeast Ohio next to Uhrichsville, where Cody grew up, had just been diagnosed with leukemia. He was five years old, barely into the age of retaining memories.

“Maddux turned five in April and we found out in June,” says Mic Maple, Maddux’s father. “We thought it was the appendix and we went to the hospital and the surgeons were like, it’s just not adding up. They did more blood work and the next day we met with our Godsend, Dr. Jeffrey Hord, of Akron Children’s Hospital. And that was Monday we went, Tuesday we found out, they were pretty sure it was leukemia. So Wednesday they did a bone marrow to confirm it and by Thursday he had a port put in and his first chemo dose.

“It was a crazy week. We went in Monday thinking appendix and Thursday he’s getting chemo. It was like…what happened?”

A month after that news blindsided the Maples, Zach — who like Cody, was a state wrestling champion — found out about Maddux’s story, and told his brother he should reach out. Cody himself was trying to begin a journey for himself in the fight game, but was making poor decisions in life.

Then it all changed. He contacted Mic through Facebook, and asked if he could come visit Maddux as soon as he returned home from the hospital. It was the first good decision Cody had made, the one that sent the proverbial apple bounding miles away from the tree.

“We had thousands of people reach out that we didn’t know,” Mic says. “We had heard of Cody, being a small town, but I’d never met him. He reached out and said he wanted to meet Maddux and give him a little something. I didn’t think much of it. I just figured, ah, it’s probably not going to happen. Cody’s 19 years old, no big deal — it’s him just being nice and reaching out to us, that was plenty. But sure enough, he texted us when Maddux got out of the hospital, and he asked if he was healthy enough that he could come by. I was like, sure.”

Cody stayed an hour-and-a-half, talking to the “very shy” and soft-spoken Maddux. As a troubled teenager who’d put together a resume of amateur boxing bouts, fueled by a mean streak he’d inherited from his father, he realized something about himself that day. He was voluntarily throwing his life away. And here was an innocent kid being asked to fight for his own life before it had really had a chance to begin. Maddux hadn’t yet even had the chance to fail. His only option now was to succeed. For him, nothing in life wasn’t a given.

So two strangers came together at a crossroads that day, the fighter and a boy, their titles interchangeable. And to hear Cody tell it, those two strangers immediately became guides for each other through their own darkest nights.

“That little kid definitely helped change my life at a time when I needed a change, and I needed to grow up,” Cody says. “He came into my life at the right time. It was a horrible circumstance but we were ready to make it our own miraculous story.”

Cody was training a couple of hours away at the time, at Strong Style Martial Arts near Cleveland. Zach suggested that for his next amateur fight, at NAAFS: Caged Vengeance 10 against Jerrell Hodge, that he have Maddux accompany him to the cage.

“My brother said I should do a donation through ticket sales for that fight,” he says. “I wanted to show [Maddux] we’re a tight community and came together. I wanted to show him he doesn’t have to fight this battle alone, that we’ll fight right with him. I got everyone — thousands of people — to come to the fight, and I donated all the ticket sales to him for medical bills. Or if they wanted to take him on a Disney vacation, those things the kid was missing out on so much, whatever they wanted. I just wanted to give him a little something. A little hope to keep fighting. It was just something I wanted to do.”

Cody has raised over $15,000 for Maddux since that fight, and Maddux has been with him the whole way. As Cody turned pro and began putting together a run towards the UFC, Maddux continued taking his chemotherapy pills. He did it for two straight years. But when he was seven, two years into his treatment, he began to lose his will to continue.

“Around December or maybe January of last year, he just started struggling taking them, he would swish them in his mouth for thirty seconds to a minute, every time,” Mic says. “And it was like, buddy, that’s ten times worse, just try to swallow it. He just hit a mental block. Finally one night he was like, ‘I don’t want to do it any more. I don’t want to take any more pills.’ I’m like, oh no, we’re not quitting now! I was like, buddy, we’re almost done, we’ll be done in August, just keep fighting.”

That’s when Mic texted Cody. That’s when the two — the fighter and the boy — made a pact to beat the long odds still in front of them.

“They talked,” Mic remembers. “Cody sent him a video and they talked. And he said, Maddux, ‘I need you to finish strong. I’m out here busting my butt and I think I’ve got a shot in a year or two of maybe getting to the big time. You’ve got to promise me…you face your treatment, you face these pills, you finish your chemo, you beat cancer and I promise you, I promise you, I will make to the UFC, win my fight, and you will be there.’

“And I swear to God, I swear to you, he ended up taking his pills that night and from the next day on, not one time, until treatment was over, did he complain or try to fight it. It was like, he had a mental block and Cody pumped him back up and he finished strong.”

Cody, now with a mission, won five pro fights in a row. He ended up moving to Sacramento to train this past July with Team Alpha Male. In November, while helping his teammate Joseph Benavidez prepare for Dustin Ortiz out in Austin, Texas, he had a chance encounter with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby. They agreed on a contract on the spot.

Garbrandt, who carries the nickname “No Love,” was headed to the UFC. Which only meant he was keeping pace with his muse, the little boy out there in Ohio who was already one step ahead of him.

On August 25, an eight-year old Maddux took his last chemo pill. His cancer has gone into full remission.

(Christopher Nolan, MetCon Photos, LLC)

*

That’s why Garbrandt wasn’t going to lose at UFC 182 on Jan. 3. Maddux, along with his dad Mic, his mother Stephani Maple, and his little sister Makyah, were right there to watch him hold up his end of the bargain. One of Garbrandt’s sponsors, Todd Meldrum, who owns the restaurant/club Martini 97 just miles from Uhrichsville, flew the family out to be with Cody.

When Garbrandt finally put Brimage away, all the promises had been kept. Things like that don’t happen in real life. But they did for the Maddux family and Cody Garbrandt.

“To see him so emotional, waving the flag, waving and crying, seeing that was better than any other feeling I had,” Cody says. “I’ve never had a feeling like that. The win was awesome, but after seeing that, it just puts everything into perspective. Everything I’ve been working for. He’s had so many tears of pain for the last three years, and just to see those tears of joy, it really got me choked up.”

Mic Maple will never forget that moment either.

“You can’t even…unless you had a kid go through it, I don’t want to get all mushy, but there were a couple of times we thought we were going to lose him,” Mic says, breaking up at the thought. “And to see him look at Cody, like we’d look at Michael Jordan back in the day, and to see him hang out with him in the room, and to watch the joy on Maddux’s face, and watch him cry because he was so freaking happy that he won. I’ll never forget that.” 

“It was the best day of my life,” Maddux says. “It was even better than Disney.”

Maddux and Cody. Cody and Maddux. The greatest pillars in the fight game.

“I told Cody the next day, I can die because I’ve seen everything,” Mic says. “I’ve seen the lowest of lows, and I’m at the highest of highs. My life is complete. I’ve seen my son, a happiness I’ve never seen. He’s a happy kid, but that’s the happiest I’ve seen him in my life. I will do anything to get Cody any love at all because I owe him my world. He helped my son get through it, and I truly believe that. There’s no doubt.”

Likewise, says Garbrandt.

“That kid made me live my life with a purpose and made me fight with a purpose,” he says, just days after the moment. “Just watching Maddux fight for his life for the last three-and-a-half years — and not only him, but his family, his mom and dad, they’re all very strong people as well. He inherited that. And he’s very optimistic at a young age. Maddux definitely gave me perspective; I am living and fighting with a purpose.

“I’m glad that he’s a part of my life, and he’s helping me out with my career.”

And now, having fulfilled their promises, Cody and Maddux have had to create new goals.

That new goal is for Maddux to one day walk Cody to the Octagon in a UFC fight.

“That would be the ultimate dream,” Mic says. “I don’t know if the UFC would ever let that, but…we got to Vegas and Maddux had asked, because he’s walked him out the past three [in other organizations], and he’s like, ‘Dad, do you think I’ll get a chance to walk him out or probably not?’ and I didn’t even want to give him hope. I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I had kept telling Maddux, Cody made it, he’s at the big time.

“At the weigh-ins is when Maddux realized, wow — look how crazy it all is. It was even more than he’d been anticipating. I was like, ‘do you see what I mean? This is the big time. He was like, ‘Dad, I’m just so glad I’m here.’ But if the UFC ever allowed him to walk out with Cody, that would probably top — I don’t know if it would top the first win — but that would be like a make-a-wish type of thing for Maddux.”

The next step for Maddux is to finally have his port — which has been used to access the main artery for all his chemo and other meds for the last three-and-a-half-years — removed from his chest.

“That’s a big, exciting countdown day for Maddux,” his father says. If all continues to go well, that could happen as soon as next month.

And whatever happens from here on out, an everlasting bond has been made. The kid and the fighter. Cody, the positive role model who never had one of his own, and Maddux, the survivor, the muse and the inspiration.

He’s Cody Garbrandt’s biggest fan.

“He’s my big brother and I love him so much,” the little boy says. “He means the world to me.”

(Christopher Nolan, MetCon Photos, LLC)

Last Saturday night, having just put away Myles Jury in an unsatisfactory manner at UFC 182, Donald Cerrone held three tall cans of Budweiser and shook his head at the post-fight press conference. The problem was the “f*ck you” kicks he delivered at the end didn’t carry enough of the obscene to his way of thinking, and it was bugging him. He felt a little slighted by what Jury offered him. The boos he heard were still chewing him up. Nobody boos a Donald Cerrone fight. He shook his head mid-reverie and dribbled spit into one of the cans.

When somebody asked Dana White if Hector Lombard, sitting a few bruised bodies down, could be repurposed for Broomfield, Colo. and stand in on short notice for the injured Tarec Saffiedine against Matt Brown, I didn’t hear a thing White said in reply.

The only thing I heard was Cerrone, holding the mic sideways and with a sneaky little half-grin, say, “the Cowboy will do it.”

Weight classes be damned. “The Cowboy will do it.” That’s a t-shirt slogan.

Cerrone may speak in the third person of the first persona, but he’s the willingest dadgum gunslinger in the West. He is always ready to fight and fight again. White apparently dismissed that Matt Brown talk as so much hooey that night, but you know what he not-so-secretly wishes? That he had 100 freaking Donald Cerrones. Two days later, on Monday, it was announced that Cerrone would stand in for the injured Eddie Alvarez at UFC Fight Night 59 in Boston against Benson Henderson, his old nemesis from the blue cage in the WEC.

Well of course he’ll stand in! Don’t have to ask Cowboy twice, provided there’s somewhere in Boston to hitch up his horse (or, park his RV as it were). Thirteen days’ notice is all Cerrone needs to try and vindicate some early losses against the one-time UFC/WEC lightweight champion.

Cerrone doesn’t compete in single fights; he goes on cage tours, like a comedian or a circus or something. Right now he’s on pace for 26 fights in 2015, wherever the four-ounce gloves will take him, from the high Sierra to the Appalachians and everywhere else in under tarnation. Obviously if he hits a modest 15 people won’t think any less of him. But nobody is as prolific as Cerrone. He’s ornery, he’s always doing “crazy sh*t,” as Dana White says, but he’s always ready to go.

There’s really no other fighter quite like him.

Chris Leben was one of those cats who people used to have to try and anesthetize in the cage lest he’d come forward on toddler legs winging bombs, but he’s a distant second to the thing I’m talking about. Leben fought Aaron Simpson and Yoshihiro Akiyama in a two-week span in 2010 — yet Leben was a dice thrower. He won some, he lost some. He wasn’t a title contender.

Cerrone fought four times in 2014, which is a lot by UFC standards, and he won them all. He fought five times in 2011, and won the first four. It (usually) takes Cerrone awhile to find his range, but when he does he just lights people up. If he had his druthers, he’d fight every other weekend, at every roadhouse and arena the UFC has a card planned for. He’s a modern day Joseph Hooker; he’s the fightingest general in the Union.

Honestly, I ask you — what’s not to love?

It used to be that Cerrone fought to sort of fund his slightly more insane pursuits outside of the cage. He splurges on boats that he can use for wakeboarding, upgrades to his RV. He repels down rock faces, cliff dives, races cars, likes the aerial acrobatics of stunt planes, sits around shooting at jackrabbits while the beans cook on the open fire. His motivations are always a little confusing. There was a string of fights back in the day that he took to pay his back taxes. Fighting feels like a 50/50 proposition to A) do some thrill seeking and B) earn some disposable income. He’s a happy-go-lucky bounty hunter who also enjoys a few cold ones.

He’s almost too good to be true. His fights are exciting, he fights often, and he mostly wins.

Benson Henderson, just like Edson Barboza, Eddie Alvarez, Jim Miller and Jury, are guys who could feasibly shoot him down. This isn’t a row of cans; these are champions, former champions, future champions, people who vaporize Terry Etim with wheel kicks. The great thing about Cerrone, though, the thing that sets him apart from everybody is this: No second thoughts. He doesn’t go in for circumspection. Just live action and live consequences. With Cowboy it’s “just get ’er done.”

Cerrone’s motto is simple: “Anytime, Anywhere.” January 18 is his next date out in Boston — two weeks removed from is last fight. He’s already thinking up the route his RV will take out east. If the UFC was willing, this could all be foreshadowing for Cerrone versus Matt Brown on Valentine’s Day. The UFC isn’t.

But Cowboy sure as hell is.

The name Matt Riddle continues to be more apt than anyone would like it to be. For instance, Riddle was released from the UFC after some “kind bud” snuck into his system (what else is there to do while playing video games?), while Jon Jones went a little Rick James there for a minute with the coke and has become a source of Tuesday pride for the UFC, the NAC and all the C’s thereafter.

As of today, Jones is in rehab. Riddle is in pro wrestling. Riddle is riddling; Jones is jonesing. They each know a different set of rails to their destinations.

And from an outsider looking in, this is all a little ass-backwards.

It wasn’t wholly surprising that Jones was using cocaine, which came to light Tuesday when news broke from Yahoo’s Kevin Iole that the Great Champ had entered a rehab facility just three days after defending his light heavyweight title against Daniel Cormier. Jones is 27 years old, a millionaire who came from restrictive circumstances, not to mention the greatest mixed martial artist going. He still believes he’s indestructible in more ways than just competition. Lessons come harder when you operate under this belief.

Besides, he’s had his share of problems throughout his career, the most distracting of which was his apparent identity crisis from the word go. Arrogance and humility have been at war inside of him for years. We know all about Good Jones vs. Bad Jones, the public brand vs. the actual man — we’ve long been familiar with the dichotomy of Jonny “Bones.” That he was using (and likely abusing) a disco drug behind closed doors shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.

What is surprising is just how asinine everything else seems.

Jones was randomly tested on Dec. 4, a full month before his UFC 182 grudge-match with Cormier. He popped hot for cocaine metabolites. The Nevada State Commission (NAC), in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), sat on this information because the positive test happened “out-of-competition.” The only way for it to be egregious enough to take action was if it happened “in competition,” which in WADA language means in the vicinity of 12 hours before the fight.

Marijuana, which is as docile as an old cat, stays in the system far longer than cocaine does, at least in most cases. The way the rules are drawn up are such that we’re punishing not the import of the drug itself (apparently), but its staying power in the body. That is a little ridiculous. Just like PEDs are not equal to pot in competition, neither is cocaine equal to pot in the recreational spectrum.

What’s crazier still is why the NAC, which presumably acts in the safety of its fighters, and the UFC, which employs them, should allow things to play out as normal with this sort of elephant in the room. If Jones was affected enough to need rehab — if he’s an addict, in other words — those were some crazy dice being thrown by everybody involved for as long as they knew. The fight game isn’t a good place for that sort of looking-the-other-way. There could have been disasters around any corner.

Instead, the disaster is confined to the aftermath, after the pay-per-units have been tallied. This makes everyone from the promotion to the sanctioning body to the muzzled people in the know seem more mercenary than feels wholesome. (Maybe the idea isn’t to get the people putting on the fights to come around to what’s humane, but for the public to embrace the fact that it isn’t).  (Then again, the NAC is now considering revising its in-vs.-out of competition rules, so maybe this Jones thing will serve as a catalyst for change).

But let’s stick to Jones, because he was being hit with everything from prayers to punch lines after the news broke. His coach Greg Jackson cautioned a few years ago that the only man that Jones had to look out for on his run to greatness was himself. That Jones could be his own worst enemy.

Here we are again with Jones acting as his own worst enemy.

After defending his belt for the eighth time, and perhaps performing better than he ever has, he’s once again scuffling through a pile of asterisks. My own initial reaction is to say, Jon Jones, get out of your own way. When Anderson Silva talked about fighting his clone, he meant it as metaphor — that he’d only find an equal in striking blows against himself. When it comes to Jones, he’s literally fighting himself every step of the way. The strikes he’s delivering against himself are mounting in the eyes of a million judges.

The good news is that he is correcting his problem. If his rehab was strictly voluntary, that means he will take another black eye publicly to get himself right. For that reason, if the UFC gushing about how proud they were of Jones for taking the step felt a little over the top, so did the urge to kick a man when he was down. Jones isn’t perfect. Nobody is. And plenty of the rocks being flung at him are not only coming from glass houses, but the worst kind of glass houses — the ones without addresses.

Jones is a conflicted human being, and he’ll be scrutinized for it so long as he stays in the public eye. His merits are extraordinary, and so are his faults. Neither can be kept secret, even when the people around him fight the urge to try.

This all goes into the riddle that is Jon Jones.

In the UFC 182 post-fight press conference, Jon Jones said that he watches his opponents so much before a fight that he “subconsciously inherits their talents.” That’s a particularly interesting thing to say, not just because it implies he kills them in advance and superimposes himself into their wills, but because it felt like, in the sea of things said, he was telling the truth.

Jones, for the most part, outwrestled the wrestler Daniel Cormier. He also beat Cormier on Saturday night to retain his title. It was supposed to be his toughest test to date, but, there again, Jones said afterwards it really wasn’t. The guy to give him the most resistance in the cage was Alexander Gustafsson, who is fighting Anthony Johnson in a couple of weeks in Sweden. Should Jones and Gustafsson meet in a sequel to their 2013 bout, Jones will have long inherited his talents.

And you know what — at this point, it’s easy to believe whatever Jones wants to tell us about his superiority in the Octagon. His eighth title defense was a thing of cruel majesty. He and Cormier met in the center of the cage with the intention or ruining each other. Cormier didn’t want to knock Jones out, he wanted to beat him for five rounds, to sap his will and break him. Instead the opposite happened. Jones took Cormier’s absolute best shot, his every dream and delusion, and still won four of the five rounds. That’s a haunting thing to have happen. If there was melancholy in the aftermath it was in the idea that Cormier poured his soul into something and was only 20 percent effective.

That’s the kind of champion that sits at the top of the 205-pound weight class. A truly dominant fighter who uses his long arms to reach deep into an ever-expanding bag of tricks. Jones is one for the ages.

And like other men who were for the ages, a lot of people can’t help but hate him. Why this is the case has become its own fun guessing game. Maybe it all stems back to the Rashad Evans double-cross, back when he vowed never to fight Evans and then had a change of heart. Evans made sure that people knew Jones was not only a traitor but a “phony.” That didn’t help. Or maybe it was because after he dropped a limp Lyoto Machida and strode off like a man of zero conscience, his coach Greg Jackson told him to “go check on Lyoto” to “make some fans.”

That didn’t sit well with people.

Nor did it sit well with anyone when UFC 151 fell out of existence because Jones refused to fight Chael Sonnen on short notice when Dan Henderson got hurt. Dana White made it clear that time that Jones could have saved an event, but opted not to. Jones and his camp became the subject of great mumbling after that.

Maybe it was because of the leaked ESPN footage, when the other Jones showed up and threatened to kill Cormier. That was the Jones we suspected existed behind The Brand all along. It could be that he’s too openly religious in the age of Google, or too hypercritical in the eyes of the religious, or too conveniently all things at once to be considered anything at all.

It could be that he ruins a lot of parlays. We could play this game all day long.

But most likely it’s because Jones is just that great in a young sport that is still defining the barriers of greatness. He is, for lack of a better word, unknowable. People cannot relate to his controlled wilderness, his ascension in the game, or his manner of dealing with it all. The idea is to humanize Jones, and yet he just won’t comply. Each time an articulate everyman comes around — people like Cormier, who can out-genuine him eight days a week — he reminds us of the gulf between him and everybody else in competition.

For whatever reason you hate Jon Jones, you can’t deny his work in the cage. Jones simply won’t be denied. Maybe that’s the true source for why people hate him — because he won’t fall on his face like an actual human being. He has no ability to inherit our talents in that way, subconsciously or otherwise.

And right now it’s easy to hate on Jon Jones for refusing to come down to Earth, which is sort of mind-blowing when you think about it.

Phil Brooks began training at Roufusport this week, less than a month after Ben Askren took offense at the UFC signing an inexperienced pro wrestler. In early December, Askren — who trains and coaches wrestling at Roufusport in Milwaukee — tweeted out the perceived hypocrisy of the UFC bringing in a pro wrestler like CM Punk ahead of a bona-fide mixed martial artist like himself.

“All you dummies believed @danawhite when he said I need more experience. Then he signs a 0-0 fake wrestler. LOL on you.”

The accomplished wrestler Askren was the long-tenured 170-pound champion in Bellator during Bjorn Rebney’s day, and was free to sign with any promotion he wanted in late-2013. He met with the powers at the UFC, but after Dana White said he should go gain “more experience” in World Series of Fighting, Askren opted to sign with the Asian-based ONE FC promotion, where he is now the welterweight champion. There has been plenty of spite on both sides since then.

But with Askren critical of the signing, how will it be with “the fake wrestler” CM Punk joining the Roufusport family?

Head coach Duke Roufus says it’ll be fine. And in fact, that Brooks will pick up more than literal wrestling techniques from Askren.

“Ben’s stoked to work with Phil,” he told MMA Fighting. “Something that’s really underrated with Ben — not unlike Daniel Cormier at AKA — he’s our fighter coach. Not only is Ben coaching well, one thing that I see him doing that I’m so happy with, he has a different perspective on helping the guys with their attitude.

“He’s all for Phil coming. He wants to work with him.”

Though there was some jostling amongst gyms trying to tempt him in, Brooks chose to train in Milwaukee in part because it was close to his native Chicago, and in part because him and Roufus have formed a friendship over the last couple of years. Though Brooks has trained in jiu-jitsu under Rener Gracie in California, he’s very much a work-in-progress at 36 years old.

But being surrounded by people like UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis and Askren will be a boon for a guy who’ll be learning the entirety of MMA on a fast track.

As for how the dynamic of Askren and Brooks will play out, Roufus said there are already more similarities between the two than people realize.

“You know what? Ben’s taking pages out of Phil’s book, what Phil did in WWE,” he said. “Ben is entertaining just with the black hat he puts on. Phil thinks Ben should be in the UFC, too.

“But, the other thing is, Twitter isn’t real. The Internet — none of this stuff is real. It’s entertainment. They’re both entertaining us. That’s the unique thing. I said it long before Brock Lesnar, and I learned this in Japan with K-1 and then the beginning of Pride Fighting — our sport is real wrestling. A lot of the guys are characters. Anthony [Pettis] is a character. I don’t know Anthony as ‘Showtime.’ I’m blessed to know Anthony as Anthony…but the week of the fight he slides into his character and becomes Showtime. That is prizefighting. I know some people who know Floyd really well. ‘Money’ and Floyd are two different people.”

LAS VEGAS – In the end, Jon Jones didn’t bury the hatchet on the bitter feud between him and Daniel Cormier. He just proved he’s the superior fighter.

Jones scored a unanimous decision victory over Cormier at UFC 182 on Saturday night, defending his light heavyweight title for the eighth time. This fight, which was embroiled with lingering bad blood between him and Cormier that goes back four years, was supposed to be his biggest challenge.

If it was, he didn’t show it.

And as Jones has done in previous fights, he even beat the storied wrestler Cormier at his own game. Asked if he relished taking Cormier down and outwrestling him throughout the fight, he said he did take extra joy in it.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Jones said in the post-fight press conference. “My wrestling coach, he is a wrestling coach right now. A lot of these coaches in MMA, they focus on MMA wrestling. My coach, his high school wrestling team is ranked tenth in the nation. They have been for several years — Israel Martinez. He’s just very connected to the wrestling community.

“And he said, the whole wrestling community is against you right now. And he said, ‘we have to improve, Jon. We have to show these guys that if you would have went D-1, that you would have been a national wrestling champion. That if you had went for the Olympics, you would have placed at the Olympics. We have to show them that you use the gifts for MMA, not wrestling. Because your dream got cut short, and you had a kid and you had to give up wrestling, doesn’t mean that you can’t wrestle with these great wrestlers.'”

When Jones defended his title against Chael Sonnen at UFC 159 in 2013, he heard similar ideas about how wrestling might beat him. In that fight, he took Sonnen down and worked his ground and pound, just to “prove a point,” he said at the time.

But Sonnen coming up a weight class to challenge the bigger Jones wasn’t the same as Cormier coming down from heavyweight to face him. In the end, though, the results were the same.

“So, we had a chip on our shoulder,” the 27-year old Jones said. “Our goal was to go out there, have faith in our wrestling to take him down, and to earn the respect from the wrestling community. I applaud the coach for building up my belief and believing in me.

“As far as beating him at his own style, I watched his fights so much, that I actually absorbed who he is. I absorbed grinding. I watched him against Frank Mir against the cage, and I was just like, I see what you’re doing there. I just watch my opponents so much I start to subconsciously inherit their talent and their gifts. So a lot of times you see me do exactly what they want to do to me do to them.”