Jon Jones, the deposed UFC champion who fights for the interim light heavyweight title against Ovince St-Preux on Saturday, has been the best mixed martial arts fighter on the planet for more than five years. Since destroying Mauricio Rua for the UFC l…
Jon Jones, the deposed UFC champion who fights for the interim light heavyweight title against Ovince St-Preux on Saturday, has been the best mixed martial arts fighter on the planet for more than five years. Since destroying Mauricio Rua for the UFC light heavyweight title in 2011, he’s fought and beaten eight of the top bruisers in the sport. Quinton Jackson, Rashad Evans, Daniel Cormier and Lyoto Machida are among the Hall of Fame names on his resume.
But despite his runaway success, Jones was cheating himself, and history, by fighting at less than his best.
In a sport where training is defined by the amateur wrestler’s grind, Jones could barely be bothered. Blessed with physical gifts and a brilliant tactical mind, and abetted by the smartest trainers in the world at Jackson-Winkeljohn’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jones was able to beat the best of the best at about 50 percent.
“Jon’s been pretty open about this—he wouldn’t train at all in the offseason,” trainer Brandon Gibson told Bleacher Report. “He’d show up to the gym after a couple of months on his couch. Jon used to show up to camp and we’d spend four of the weeks getting into shape. That would leave us with just three weeks of fight-specific training. Then we’d be on the road for fight week. We’d be super crunched for time every fight.”
No more.
“I’m really doing the right things to compete at my best, and it’s scary when you give your best, because you are totally putting yourself out there,” Jones told Rolling Stone‘s Mike Bohn (warning: NSFW language). “Being a smoker and being a drinker and a party boy, I always used to think, ‘If this guy beats my ass, I really know there was a different level I never tapped into. He didn’t beat me at my best.’ Now I really am giving my best, and it leaves you to be vulnerable.”
His trials and tribulations, most self-imposed, have been well-documented over the last year. Less often discussed is something that should absolutely terrify prospective opponents for years to come. Because while Jones was working hard to become a better man, he was also spending valuable time becoming a better fighter.
“We’ve been able to work on so many skills and techniques in the last year,” Gibson said. “We didn’t know when he was going to fight again. I just said, ‘Jon, let’s you and me, as brothers, hit the pads and do what we do best.’ We just came in Sunday nights, cracked pads and had fun. It was our opportunity to try cool ninja s–t, stuff that we’ve never done before.”
The best fighter in the world, after half a decade on top of the sport, is finally getting serious. And a big part of that growth occurred not in the famed training room but down the road 10 minutes at a plain unadorned building with little to announce it as the home of champions except a stack of enormous tires outside.
Zia Strength Systems doesn’t look like the kind of place where you’d find a millionaire, elite athlete. It’s a hole-in-the-wall in Albuquerque and, run by Jordan and Matt Chavez, is a serious weightlifter’s paradise.
Their website’s mission statement leaves no room for ambiguity. “This is a serious gym with loud music, strong people and a whole lot of weight being thrown around,” it reads in part. “… Our gym is definitely not a health or social club.”
It isn’t a place for conversation. In fact, it’s strongly discouraged, especially when someone is working out. This is a place for moving weight. Great, heaping piles of it. For a fighter looking to escape the pressure of being “the great Jon Jones,” it was perfect.
“He came in here, he wasn’t 230 with abs. He was 220 with no abs,” strength trainer Jordan Chavez said. “So he probably put on, easily, 15-20 pounds of muscle, lost about 15 pounds of fat.”
The pictures that showed up on social media stopped the MMA world in its tracks. The Jones who emerged from Zia looked nothing like the fighter who was nicknamed “Bones” because he looked so frail next to his brothers (Arthur and Chandler, both NFL players).
Instead, he resembled what he’d always been—a world-class athlete. The Chavez brothers, playing off his established nickname, even started calling him “Meat.” But this was more than cosmetic work. Jones found himself at Zia because, after eight years in the cage, his body needed some help.
“There were guys in the gym at Jackson’s, he told me, whose physical strength he felt,” Gibson said. “It motivated him to want to become physically stronger. And he did it. He put on a lot of size and strength.”
Working with just three basic movements, the bench, squat and dead lift, Zia was able to make monumental changes in a short amount of time. Coming into the gym, Jones hadn’t lifted since high school. The Chavez brothers diagnosed weakness in his hips, hamstrings, glutes and lower back. There was a lot of work to be done.
“He was like a fish out of water, but he’s such an amazing athlete that he picks it up a lot quicker,” Jordan said. “You’ll notice how good of an athlete someone is by how quickly they’re able to activate the proper muscles to start working out. So as soon as I saw him, we started working it, within about a week you already saw tremendous improvement. Even like day one his form was already better from the start to the finish of our first day.
“And then from there it was just a snowball effect. He was in here four days a week religiously, and just from there he was able to make such tremendous progress just because he was dedicated and focused.”
In workouts that averaged about an hour-and-a-half, the two brothers set about rebuilding the core of one of the top fighters on the planet. In his first week he dead-lifted 275 pounds. A few months later he almost cleared 625 pounds. And he did it all without bulking up to the point he couldn’t make the light heavyweight class limit of 205 pounds.
“There’s two different ways, you can grow it or you can strengthen it. That’s mainly what we were doing with Jon,” Matt said. “If you look at Usain Bolt, fastest man in the world, he does the same stuff. He strength trains, he squats heavy, and he dead-lifts heavy. People don’t realize that. And does that make him slower or too bulky? Absolutely not. You know the main thing is you build the strength in that muscle.”
The effect on his fighting, Gibson says, has been impressive. Already a terror hitting pads and sparring, Jones was able to mix it up with even the strongest fighters in the camp.
“If Jon was heavy lifting during training camp, I wouldn’t like it,” Gibson said. “But Jon lifting in the offseason? It’s awesome. It would be different if he threw on 20 pounds a few weeks before the fight. He got bigger seven months ago, and we’ve eased into all his martial arts techniques. His neural pathways are used to this new size and strength.
“Jon, Wink (coach Mike Winkeljohn) and I went to get some work in the other night. I was watching Wink and thinking, ‘Damn, that must hurt Wink so bad.’ Two seconds later I’m right back in there…Seven weeks before this fight, he was in the best shape he’s ever been in. We’ve had fun playing with his new strength. People were worried about his size, but his weight’s on point. He’s just stronger. And better than ever.”
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
Mixed martial arts inspires the unbelievable. Being locked in a cage with another martial arts master forces a level of concentration, willpower and mental dexterity that is incomparable. The improbable is routine in the cage—especially if B…
Mixed martial arts inspires the unbelievable. Being locked in a cage with another martial arts master forces a level of concentration, willpower and mental dexterity that is incomparable. The improbable is routine in the cage—especially if Bellator star Michael “Venom” Page (9-0) is digging through his bag of tricks.
In a sport where the extraordinary happens with startling regularity, Page is able to draw oohs and ahs from even the most curmudgeonly observers. The Page Show is part dance routine, part fight, with more than a little bit of professional wrestling razzle dazzle holding the entire production together.
The son of kickboxing champion Curtis Page (and brother of four other martial arts standouts) the 29-year-old Londoner has been competing for most of his life in one form or another. His fight against Jeremie Holloway on Spike TV Friday will be his sixth for Bellator on national television.
Despite this pedigree, he remains an unproven commodity in the cage. Bleacher Report’s Senior Combat Sportswriter Jonathan Snowden caught up with the elusive Page to talk about kungfu, pro wrestling and how the two combine to create one heck of a show.
Bleacher Report: I understand that your parents are Shaolin masters. Like Shaolin masters from Sunday afternoon movies?
Michael Page:They definitely felt like that to me when I was young, 100 percent. If I got into trouble or made a mistake, they’re giving me training drills. They’re not sending me to my room. So it was very different.
It kept me in line. I was very respectful. And it became very easy to be sociable as well. I wasn’t a shy person at all just from traveling around from an early age.
I think my first international competition, I was eight. I went away to Germany for a competition. Every weekend we were driving somewhere to some competition, and it helps with your character and character building and meeting so many different people, so many different cultures. It really opened your eyes. And yeah, it’s helped me massively.
B/R: So paint the picture for me of these kinds of tournaments. Are these like in recreation centers or like in the ballroom of like a big hotel in town? Where were these things going down and how did it work?
MP: Yeah, a lot of the places there were just sports halls. And you’d go there and there would be like six to 12 mats, depending on how big the events were. A lot of them would be like six mats and you’re there all day.
The juniors would fight, all the children would fight earlier on, and then you’d work your way up to adults. It literally is one long day, I’d wake up at like 6 a.m. to get ready to drive down however many hours. Competition usually starts at 10 a.m., 11, you’re not leaving until about 9 p.m., 10 that night. So it was really, really long days.
But I enjoyed everything. Every weekend, or every other weekend, I was just watching combat. And you just soak in so much when you’re around that arena.
B/R: Were you already employing some of the style that we see from you now? If so, was that controversial in the traditional martial arts world? Were you a controversial fighter as a kid, or did that come later?
MP: The actual point fighting we did, it kind of came from like sports karate and then a lot of these are just different styles. A lot of our kungfu styles, like the wushu style, they were very flamboyant.
Although they are a traditional art, in combat they used to throw a lot of fancy kicks and stuff, a lot of the kicks that people would say are not effective. So I was actually in an arena that applauded that behavior, if you know what I mean. It was normal to be flamboyant, to put on a show. And all I’ve done is just converted what I was already doing for many years into the cage.
B/R: Here I was picturing this room full of grizzled senseis furious at this cocky kid Michael Page and your dad frowning at you.
MP: It’s funny, but I actually saw a video of my dad competing. Obviously this is years and years ago, but his mannerisms and the way he was carrying on, again, the same kind of like entertaining I do.
Pumping up the crowd, putting his hands up, like dancing around, all the same kind of things that I’m doing now. You know I used to sit down, watch my dad when I was like three, four, and five, you know watching him compete around the country. So it was normal. It was very normal for me.
B/R: What does your dad, an old-school kungfu man, make of mixed martial arts?
MP: He’s still worried about me, even now. It’s something that he had no knowledge in, in that sense. He’s more of just a stand-up and the points.
When I told him I wanted to do it, straightaway he was s–tting himself. He enjoys watching me after I go out and put on a show, and he’s always tuned in. But he’s still worried. I think just the parent in him, you know watching your child do something as tough as our sport is always gonna be difficult.
B/R: What I’ve seen of that freestyle kickboxing style, it’s like a one-shot, one-kill kind of thing where like as soon as somebody lands, it’s over. Is it sort of like taekwondo?
MP: Yeah, it’s very similar to taekwondo, very similar to taekwondo. You don’t have the body pad, but you score points and it’s all about the referee’s discretion. Which can be very controversial, but it’s all part of the game.
It’s a very similar sport. We actually had a lot of taekwondo guys partake in our events, a lot of karate guys as well. It’s kind of like a mixed martial arts arena as well, just for the point scoring systems.
B/R: I wish I wasn’t so ignorant about it. From what I’ve seen there’s no leg kicks either?
MP: There’s no leg kicks and obviously no elbows, no knees. Kicks are fine so as long as it’s above the waist. The only thing we could do below was sweep the foot.
So yeah, it’s different. It’s different, but it really encourages speed, it encourages timing, distance, which is everything you see me do in the cage.
B/R:I really can see that when I watch you fight. By the way, I haven’t said it, but I love watching you fight. You break every rule of conventional mixed martial arts and thai boxing and even western boxing.
Like the way you keep your hands down. The lack of a jab. The way you dance. Even when you close distance, you just kind of explode in. And now I see that comes from this background. It’s all about explosiveness and landing that one shot. And that’s where you come from, huh?
MP: Yeah, 100 percent that’s what it’s about. And I remember certain things that my instructor always said. And obviously the instructor being my dad would say different things and certain things would stick out to you.
And he always used to say “if you are fighting someone and that person had a knife and you had a knife, you can’t go in there and just play a 50-50 games.” You know you have to be in and out and land your shot without getting touched. You have to take it as seriously as that.
This is one of those things that’s always stuck in my head and it’s one of those things I try to always add to my game. You know, you get in and out without being touched.
B/R: You do a lot of things that could be broadly described as taunting. When you’re doing that dancing in the ring, is that taunting, or is there a tactical purpose to it, where you’re attempting to distract or anger your opponent? Or is it like a little bit of both?
MP: It does about three things at once. It’s important because you create frustration in your opponent. People, they don’t want that to happen to them.
I’ve actually spoken to fighters that I’ve fought afterward, and they were like, yeah, “you know what, before I fought you I was like, there’s no way you’d be able to do that.” And obviously I did in the end.
It is very frustrating, and it makes people make mistakes. They have to rush in, or they sit back and almost watch the show, just like everybody else.
It also calms me down. A lot of the times if I feel like I’m under a little bit of pressure; sometimes I start dancing and dance and music, those are two things that just keep me relaxed. If I could, I’d fight with headphones in, but obviously I can’t, so I’m gonna have to use the body movement I can use to relax me.
And lastly, it changes the dynamics of where I can throw techniques from because my hands are moving in a weird direction and my feet are moving in weird directions. It’s very hard for you to get my timing, which makes it easier for me to land on you, like I say, while you’re in that frustrated mode. You know a lot of times you’re standing still and just observing, I can land shots and move around.
A lot of fighters, we drill and drill and drill and drill with the same techniques over and over again, and they usually come from a very similar place. But because I’m dancing and moving my hands, they’re not coming from the same places that you have spent years drilling, and it makes it even easier for me to land shots. So it kind of does a lot in one.
B/R: And they’re frustrated because like they’re coming from either a muaythai background or a wrestling background and what they both want is for you to be right in front of them, right? And when you’re not, they don’t have any idea what to do.
Do you sense that confusion in them when you get into the cage and you start moving around and they’re just like, “what the heck am I supposed to do now?” I sense that in them.
MP: No, that’s exactly it. They’re used to having a particular type of fighter in front of them, and it’s not what I present to them. So it is a very frustrating thing to fight against.
It’s very difficult to even get training partners to simulate what I do because a lot of the times it’s very spontaneous and it’s hard to read.
B/R: Since you come from the point fighting, the one-shot, one-kill world, how hard was it for you to adapt to MMA? Where you land that one shot, but that’s not the end. You’ve got five minutes of continuous action.
That had to have been a huge change in the way you conceptualize the fight. How long did it take you to adjust to that?
MP: To be fair, I’ve always been very fit. I had thought that would take out of me the most, the five-minute rounds and stuff, but weirdly enough the rounds didn’t take out of me the most. Neither did the ground game.
What took it out of me the most to begin was the wrestling because, obviously, standing up I was used to. But falling over and getting back up and falling over and getting back up and trying to take someone down and getting back up, that took it out of me a lot more.
But the more I did it, it just became normal as well. When you mix all of it together, you’re working your muscles in so many different ways that it can be tiring. But again, the more and more I did it, the more and more I got used to it. My trainers putting me through hell every week, with regard to the fitness, fitness regimens and strength and conditioning, it helped. And it just feels normal now.
B/R: I was also just thinking about your old world of points fighting. When you land a punch there, that’s it. You kind of back away, right?
In MMA you have to have this finishing instinct. Did you already have some of that in you, or did you have to learn it, like the idea of like staying on top of someone once you’ve landed heavy on them?
MP: It’s still quite instinctive not to, because even with my knockdowns, I don’t believe with any one of my knockdowns you’ve seen me climb onto someone and continue. It’s still quite instinctive to stop.
You know, once I feel like I’ve hit that final blow, it feels like the end the fight as well. It’s not built in me to start ground and pounding or following them down to the floor.
I hit the shot, you know I make my space so I don’t get hit, and I move around and set it up again. And I just keep doing that until I land those kinds of shots and people are falling over. So I just keep doing the same thing.
B/R: This is just a guess on my part, but I’m gonna guess that you’re a professional wrestling fan?
MP: Oh, yeah, 100 percent. One hundred percent.
B/R:I just see that after the fight the way you do stuff like look at your glove and brush it off or make those elaborate hand signals. To me that feels like the ’90s wrestling that I grew up with. Is that where you take it from?
MP: Yeah, a lot of the stuff. I’m a natural showman anyway, but yeah like those are the kinds of things that have inspired me. I’m not a master at trash talk. I’m more kind of being a character. You know what I mean.
And like you say, back in the day, the wrestlers were characters, man, and they had their own little things that they did. And this is where all my different movements come from when I’m standing in front of the fans.
I’ve kind of thought about what character I want to be. You know what I mean? And yeah, it’s definitely from watching people like The Rock. The way they interact with the crowd and how the crowd can almost feel like they’re connected with that person, just by doing certain moves or saying certain lines.
B/R: Are you the good guy or the bad guy? Because I hear a lot of cheers, but I hear some boos too.
MP: I’m definitely both, because as much as entertainment-wise I’m the good guy, a lot of people find it disrespectful as well. So to them I’m the bad guy. Just being me puts me in both categories. It also makes me an interesting person to watch and to follow.
B/R: I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but when I watch you I don’t necessarily see a fighter. I see an action star, like Don “The Dragon” Wilson or Billy Blanks or Phillip Rhee from the Best of the Best movies.
I could completely see Michael Page as the star of that kind of movie. Has that ever occurred to you? Do those kinds of movies even exist anymore?
MP: No, no, I understand. That’s exactly what I want. I want to be that face. I want to be a star. Every time I go out there, I aim to put on a show for that very reason, to be the memorable person on that show, regardless.
This is why, when people ask me “do you prefer to be a main event and this and that,” I couldn’t care less. I put on my own main event every time, so it doesn’t matter. You can put me on the first fight of the night, and I’m still looking to put on a show.
And yeah, those are kind of the people that I used to watch religiously when I was younger, all those kind of characters. It’s something that I want to aspire to, just having that kind of status in MMA.
B/R: My last question for you, and we’ve kind of already talked about it a little bit, but I’m interested in the return of the traditional martial artist. Earlier this year I talked to Stephen Thompson, who comes from a traditional martial arts family much like yours. Other fighters, like ConorMcGregor, have a traditional martial arts kind of movement.
Are you guys, this group of great fighters, changing the way that we’re gonna think about mixed martial arts striking going forward? Is the sport moving away from the thai boxing style? Are you changing this game? In 10 years, are a lot of people gonna look like Michael Page?
MP: Yeah, I feel even quicker than that. I think people, especially in martial arts, progress and change very quickly. They catch on very, very fast.
I’ve already seen a lot more people being a lot more flamboyant, a lot more relaxed, have a lot more movement in the cage. And like you say, the names that you brought up, like the McGregors, the Thompsons, they’re all doing the same thing in a slightly different way.
I’m happy that people are starting to see the effects of what I do and the style of where I come from and start to appreciate it a bit more.
All things kind of go around in circles. I think back in the day before the MMA really became what MMA is, kungfu was the main thing, you know kungfu and karate. Then the Thais came over and they started dominating and then everyone wanted to do that. And I think it just goes around in circles.
A lot of people are gonna adapt the traditional martial arts style and then just forget about how effective thai boxing can be. And then that’s gonna come back around again. Maybe in a different form or with a different name. But right now, what we’re doing is what’s popular. Because it’s definitely working.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
A month ago this looked like a card worthy of network television. Going against boxing on NBC and the NBA playoffs, the UFC and Fox pulled out the big guns.
Top lightweights Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov were scheduled to do battle in a fight l…
A month ago this looked like a card worthy of network television. Going against boxing on NBC and the NBA playoffs, the UFC and Fox pulled out the big guns.
Top lightweights Tony Ferguson and KhabibNurmagomedov were scheduled to do battle in a fight likely to crown an eventual title challenger. Meanwhile veteran mainstays Dan Henderson, LyotoMachida, Glover Teixeira and Rashad Evans were booked to give the young stars plenty of support among casual fans.
By fight night, however, only one original contest survived. Thanks to injuries and the continuing PED plague, Evans and Teixeira became the main event by default.
The bout, scheduled for five rounds, ended quickly courtesy of a Teixeira left hook. It’s a victory that will give him a second chance at title glory and send the 36-year-old Evans home with some important decisions to make about his career and life.
“My focus is always to finish fights,” Teixeira said after the fight. “I am here to take care of business and always want things to end as quickly as possible. The fight could have easily gone to five rounds but it didn’t.”
The main event, of course, wasn’t the only bout on the card. Technically there were 10 other winners and 10 losers. You’ll find a complete account on the last slide.
But, as any MMA fan could tell you, official results only mean so much. What follows are the real winners and losers, the men and women who impacted the card for good or ill.
Have some thoughts of your own to share? Sound off in the comments.
Patricky “Pitbull” Freire, the lightweight striker who headlines Bellator’s first European expansion Saturday against Kevin Souza, had a point to prove back in 2012. When longtime Bellator kingpin Eddie Alvarez publicly declared his intention to let hi…
Patricky “Pitbull” Freire, the lightweight striker who headlines Bellator‘s first European expansion Saturday against Kevin Souza, had a point to prove back in 2012. When longtime Bellator kingpin Eddie Alvarez publicly declared his intention to let his contract expire and join the UFC, Patricky begged to be the man to send him on his way.
In the midst of his own, he wanted to show he was a company man—loyal, stalwart and deadly. He would avenge Alvarez’s betrayal and prove to the promotion, and himself, that he was every bit the fighter his brother Patricio, a former featherweight champion, was.
Instead, everything fell apart. Stalled, leaving him to compete in the biggest fight of his career for a guarantee that would embarrass most UFC rookies. Worse, with just 10 seconds left in the first round, a mistake left him knocked senseless.
His cornermen, already on their feet to discuss changes he could make in the next round, instead came in to console him after his first knockout loss. He left Ontario, Canada with a smashed face, bruised pride and less than $2,000 in his pocket.
“Everything was set up to be something very good and it ended up being a nightmare to me,” Patricky told Bleacher Report. “It left me devastated and very unhappy with the organization. Most people actually really think that fighters are all rich and have no idea of the things most of us go through. Thank God I have a great father.
“He was the one who allowed me put food on the table, he also paid for my daughter’s school. Every time I was going through tough times he came to my rescue. I didn’t want him to do that; I don’t like to depend on other people. I only accepted because I was going through a very difficult time. I couldn’t afford anything.”
Patricky returned to Rio deJaneiro where he had settled with his wife and daughter to build a new life at Team Nogueira. It wasn’t easy, though UFC legend Antonio “Minotauro” Nogueira proved a great mentor who even helped when things were particularly dire.
But, separated by a 35-hour car trip from everything he’d ever known, Freire failed to thrive. He didn’t see his parents for more than a year. His brother, so often a rival and an inspiration, was training at their home in Natal almost 2,600 kilometers away while he struggled to find his way far from home.
“The training at Team Nogueira was great, the coaches, the sparring partners, but it just wasn’t the right environment for him,” Patricio said. “Personally, he had gone through some very dark times and he was struggling. To live in Rio costs much more than to live in Natal. He was away from our family and friends, his life wasn’t good, he wasn’t happy.”
Life for Patricky centered around fighting. With no friends, no money and no ties to the community, he focused entirely on his craft. But even in the cage, the struggle just intensified. Misery compounded when Patricky lost his next fight and then injured his knee before a 2013 tournament he expected to vault him right back into contention.
He was broken and broke, without sponsors or immediate relief, spiralling into a depression that made it difficult to get up every morning.
“Some days when you wake up you don’t feel like doing anything,” Patricky said. “I would go to practice because my wife would ask me to get out off bed, trying to motivate me. I would go, but lacking disposition, lacking desire.
“You feel like telling everyone to f–k off and giving up on everything. Some other days you wake up motivated looking to train hard, get some money and beating up all your opponents from all the rage and frustration piled up. It varies a lot.”
After a 2013 fight in Thackerville, Oklahoma, Patricio had seen enough. He demanded his brother return home to Natal. The aggressive fighter who struck fear in opponents’ hearts, the one who was forced to ice his hands after fights because he hit so hard was gone. Patricio wanted him back and didn’t believe that could happen in Rio.
“I lost my style of fighting; I lost a bit of my roots,” Patricky said. “I returned to Natal after my fight with Berto. I didn’t even stop in Rio. When I got there my wife and I decided to stay there permanently and I never again returned to my home in Rio after that.
“I only had one bag with me, but I was happy with this happening. I saw my friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time, I met my parents who I didn’t see for more than a year. I trained with happiness—something that hadn’t happen in a long while.”
Since returning home, Patricky has amassed a 4-2 record. It’s a record that has helped him reestablish his place in the hierarchy after losing three of his previous four as part of Team Nogueira. A knockout win over Ryan Couture reminded the sport who Patricky is. A win in Italy would move him an important step closer to title contention.
“Patricky has such a talent that if he wants to, no one will ever touch him,” Patricio said. “He needs to let that monster inside of him out every time, no matter the circumstances. He needs to get up from and dedicate every day like he’s preparing for a championship. Training needs to be priority over everything.
“He needs to be open to sacrifice more of his personal life. These are some things he’s been working on and I’ve seen changes already. I believe he’s on the right path and when all that becomes natural to him we’ll witness something great. He’ll certainly become a world champion and I have no doubt he’ll be able to accomplish much more than that.”
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
Way back in 1997, as the UFC was entering what fans called “the dark ages,” a single bright light shined with an intensity then unknown in the world of mixed martial arts. In 16 seconds, Frank Shamrock did more than submit Olympic gold medalist Kevin J…
Way back in 1997, as the UFC was entering what fans called “the dark ages,” a single bright light shined with an intensity then unknown in the world of mixed martial arts. In 16 seconds, Frank Shamrock did more than submit Olympic gold medalist Kevin Jackson, more than win a newly created UFC championship.
In those brief moments between takedown and armbar, Shamrock also set a new standard for all UFC light heavyweight champions to follow. In the years that followed, even after Shamrock’s sudden retirement from the UFC, the division stood apart from the rest of the pack. Its champion and challengers, traditionally, were the sport’s marquee fighters on two continents.
The list of light heavyweight stalwarts isn’t a collection of mere champions. These are the men who defined the sport. Tito Ortiz. Chuck Liddell. Wanderlei Silva. Randy Couture.
Love him or not, Jones absolutely belongs right alongside the very best this sport has ever seen. Five former champions in a row fell to his hand, and he defended the belt a record eight times in a row before taking some time to get his life together. Whether that sticks or not, Jones has already established himself as the top competitor of his era.
The Champions
Jon Jones (21-1)
Jones, the best fighter in the world, is just 28 years old. Unless fate, or his own recklessness, strikes him down, he should carry on the legacy of the men who preceded him ably, the rightful successor to a position that has only been occupied by the best of the best for almost two decades.
You may have noticed, however, that Jones is not listed as the UFC’s official champion at 205 pounds. A series of incidents, from a positive cocaine test to a hit-and-run traffic accident, forced the UFC to strip official recognition from its top athlete.
By the time he steps into the cage against Daniel Cormier at UFC 197 (if he does), it will have been more than 15 months since Jones competed in a UFC bout. For the first time in more than five years, he will enter the cage first—the challenger at least in name.
Daniel Cormier (17-1)
While Jones was, to borrow a quote from the man himself, “getting his s–t together,” Cormier ably filled his shoes, beating slugger Anthony Johnson for the interim title and then beating Alexander Gustafsson in his first defense.
Twice an Olympian, Cormier has developed into one of the most intelligent and diverse fighters in the game. He’s developed a solid striking game and remains a threat to take any opponent down on a whim. It’s a time-tested combination, but one few have executed better than Cormier.
His stellar light heavyweight career, however, has been contested in Jones’ giant shadow. Unless or until Cormier can beat the man, he can never truly be the man.
The Contenders
Anthony Johnson (21-5)
After losing to Cormier in a bout for the UFC light heavyweight interim championship, Johnson has picked up right where he left off—knocking fools out right and left. Most recently, he ended Ryan Bader’s latest run at the championship with a left hand that turned a contender into a pretender in fewer than 90 seconds.
Johnson’s uncanny power makes him a threat to any fighter in the division, including Jones. No skill set or master plan can contend with the kind of punching prowess that potentially makes a single mistake your last one.
Glover Teixeira (24-4)
A pupil of Liddell’s coach John Hackleman, Teixeira had won 20 consecutive fights before Jones and new Bellator star Phil Davis handed him his first losses in nine years.
Teixeira has since returned to form, scoring consecutive finishes against what passes for rising stars in this moribund division. But, at 36, Teixeira’s time at the top is surely coming to an end. His next title shot, most likely, will be his last.
A Long Way to Go
Alexander Gustafsson (16-4)
Gustafsson did an admirable job reinventing himself after a 2010 loss to Phil Davis. Instead of giving up, he went to train with the man who vanquished him, joining Davis in San Diego and becoming one of the best fighters in the division.
But, at this point, it’s fairly clear that Gustafsson falls just short of the elite. He’s lost to Jones, Cormier and Johnson. No matter who emerges from that trio as champion, it will be hard for the sport’s top Swede to make a reasonable case for the title.
Ryan Bader (20-5)
Five consecutive victories, including wins over former champion Rashad Evans and Davis, had Bader on the verge of contention. But the hype train was brutally derailed by Johnson’s fearsome punching power and Bader, once again, was sent back to the end of the line.
At 32, Bader is right in the middle of his fighting prime. Unfortunately for him, his skill set makes him ill-suited to compete with the best fighters in the division. He’s a gatekeeper. A darn good gatekeeper, granted, but a gatekeeper nonetheless.
Ovince Saint-Preux (19-7)
At some point, Saint-Preux stopped being the division’s top prospect and became a mid-tier fighter instead. But after eight years in the sport, and with his 30th birthday in his rearview mirror, it’s clear at this point that Saint-Preux is what he is—and that’s something less than championship material.
Rashad Evans (19-4-1)
Old man Evans, a veteran of the second season of The Ultimate Fighter way back in 2005, has only fought once since 2013. That bout, a lackluster decision loss to Bader, did little to convince anyone that Evans has a bright future, no matter how glorious his championship past.
The Prospects
Nikita Krylov (19-4)
The 24-year-old Ukrainian karate fighter has become a cult favorite thanks to his exciting style and inexplicable love of American gangster Al Capone.
One the plus side, all 19 of his wins have come in the first round. That they’ve all come against the division’s lower tier means it’s not yet time to declare Krylov a future champion.
Corey Anderson (8-1)
Anderson was the winner of one of the seasons of The Ultimate Fighter you didn’t watch. That’s OK, no one else did either.
Anderson beat someone named Matt Van Buren in that season’s finale, which, in the current state of the division, was enough to qualify him as a prospect. That status is being reconsidered after a lackluster win over veteran Tom Lawlor earlier this month.
The Last Word
For the first time in MMA history, the future looks bleak in the sport’s most important division. Cormier is old, Jones is in a constant state of self-destruction and Johnson has spent several years alienating many of the UFC’s female fans.
The future doesn’t just seem to pale in comparison to the glorious past. Worse, it’s almost nonexistent. There is no heir apparent to Jones and Cormier. Our only hope is that the former champion gets his head on straight and continues to prove what many of us have known for years—that he’s the best fighter the world has ever seen.
Holly Holm’s left leg did more than take the UFC championship from Ronda Rousey. That emphatic loss changed everything, and not just for Rousey. It was one of the few times a single athlete’s performance has effected the landscape of an entire sport.
I…
Holly Holm’s left leg did more than take the UFC championship from Ronda Rousey. That emphatic loss changed everything, and not just for Rousey. It was one of the few times a single athlete’s performance has effected the landscape of an entire sport.
It was the shot heard around the MMA world, its echoes still being felt by a promotion that had devoted much of its energy to building Rousey as a sport-defining superstar.
For months after the first loss of her professional career, Rousey kept a low profile. When she did emerge, it was for mainstream appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Saturday Night Live. Fighting seemed the furthest thing from her mind, to the point she even banned journalists from asking her about it.
That all changed within minutes of Holm’s upset loss to long-time Rousey rival Miesha Tate. Suddenly Rousey was texting UFC President Dana White that she was ready to “get back to work.”
What should fans make of her instantaneous about-face? Bleacher Report lead writers Jonathan Snowden and Chad Dundas are here to help you figure out what’s really going on here.
Jonathan Snowden: There was something so utterly predictable about Rousey’s decision to insert herself back on the chessboard the very moment Holm was removed from the game. It fits perfectly with everything she’s revealed to us since things didn’t go exactly her way for the first time in almost eight years.
MMA fans have been blessed with great champions over the years, men and women with a true martial spirit. MMA fighters, traditionally, have challenged themselves and the world, willing to take the hardest fight, the most compelling challenge, to avenge even the most heinous loss.
Rousey, it seems, wasn’t cut from that cloth. At least not the post-Holm Rousey, a fighter who seemingly lost more than just a fight. She lost the aura, confidence and swagger that made her so compelling to fans and intimidating to opponents. The first time she drew a bad hand, after she’d spent her entire career with pocket aces, first for Strikeforce and then for the UFC, Rousey folded.
Only when Tate, a fighter she’s beaten twice, emerged with championship gold, did Rousey regain interest in the sport. That’s the antithesis of what MMA has always been. That’s a boxing mentality. Is that where this thing is headed Chad, into a brave new future where carefully protected company champions do their best to avoid danger? If so, I don’t like it.
Chad Dundas: I agree it’s an awkward look for both Rousey and the UFC. The complete about-face it represents from her emotional appearance on Ellen makes you wonder what’s really going on in the ex-champ’s world.
From the company’s side, we can’t be surprised by the sheer cold-blooded pragmatism. If the rise of stars like Rousey and Conor McGregor has reinforced any one truth, it’s that the UFC will go for the money every single time. Right now, it obviously feels the most lucrative choice is to have Rousey back as champion.
Remember though, it also seemed pretty gung ho at first to move her into an immediate rematch with Holm, even though conventional wisdom said Rousey would only lose again. To me, that doesn’t necessarily equate to careful protection so much as good business.
And as for Rousey herself? Considering all we have to go on is White’s secondhand account of their text exchange, I’m not quite ready to hang her out to dry. For all we know, she was planning to return against the winner of Tate-Holm anyway. So long as she comes back and continues to fight every top contender in her weight class, I suppose I won’t find much fault, aside from perhaps a poorly timed text.
JS: I agree that we don’t know with any certainty what happened. What we do know is that when Holm was champion, Rousey was conspicuous by her absence. The very night Holm was deposed, Rousey is suddenly ready to step into the limelight again.
Maybe she would have been ready to return either way. Maybe she would have sent White the same text message if Holm had won the bout. But that it happened only when Tate secured the title seems telling in some way.
I don’t think there is much doubt that UFC wants Rousey to succeed. They’ve spent much of their institutional capital in Los Angeles and New York making sure she made a bigger splash than any fighter ever.
But this is hardly a sport built on pragmatism. This is a spectacle made great by the will of its athletes to dominate all comers. We love great fighters because they look the hardest challenge dead in the eye and agree to see what happens when they step into a steel cage.
The difference between how Rousey has handled her upset loss and the way Conor McGregor faced his own unexpected defeat speaks volumes about who they are. McGregor immediately owned up to his loss, faced the media in a series of intimate interviews and issued a promise to face his conqueror Nate Diaz again.
That all speaks highly of McGregor, but it’s not particularly unusual. Jose Aldo wants nothing more than to face McGregor again, despite being brutally knocked out. Brock Lesnar couldn’t stop thinking about Frank Mir until he’d avenged his defeat. And Georges St-Pierre made it his life’s goal to knock an albatross named Matt Hughes off his shoulders.
That’s how fighters respond. If Rousey really is keener to fight Tate than she was Holm, that signals to me a problem with her makeup. Is it possible, for all her athletic skill, Rousey’s mean mask and manufactured rage was covering up something deeper, some insecurity she tried to hide even from herself? Don’t get me wrong here. Rousey has proven her courage over and over again. But this is a sport that requires absurd confidence to succeed on the highest level.
“This is a broken woman,” Tate opined on the Jay Mohr Sports Show. “I don’t know if she’ll ever come back the same.”
Unfortunately, Tate may have hit the nail on the head. I want to see the Rousey we’d all grown to care about, whether we loved her or hated her. That Rousey was a monster. That Rousey would have wanted Holm in the worst way. And if that’s not the Rousey who’s returning, she belongs in the world of “lights, camera, action” and not the less forgiving world of “let’s get it on.”
CD: No doubt about it, Rousey’s immediate response to getting KOed didn’t do her public image any favors. Especially now that it’s juxtaposed with McGregor’s grace in defeat, it seems particularly ignoble.
Maybe I’m being naïve here—and, believe me, I made disapproving, sportswriterly clucking sounds as I watched Rousey walk through LAX with that pillow over her face—but I’m OK with the idea that people respond to losses differently.
Rousey hadn’t experienced that kind of pain in a long while, and the amount she had to lose, as well as the public scrutiny on her, outweighed even what McGregor had to deal with. If I had that many people exalting in the worst moment of my life, I might seek refuge in my favorite pillow, too.
Look, has Rousey done a lot of things I didn’t love? Sure. I didn’t love the pillow thing. I didn’t love the text. But do I think those things are indicative of some deep flaw in her spirit? Maybe. Maybe not.
The proof will be in the doing. If she takes out Tate in under a round and then immediately announces her retirement as champion? Or if she ducks Holm in some way? Then, yeah, that’ll be pretty janky.
If she comes back, fights Tate, fights Holm and goes on with the business of being Ronda Rousey? That’ll be good enough for me.
Jonathan Snowden and Chad Dundas cover combat sports for Bleacher Report.
Jon Jones, the deposed UFC champion who fights for the interim light heavyweight title against Ovince St-Preux on Saturday, has been the best mixed martial arts fighter on the planet for more than five years. Since destroying Mauricio Rua for the UFC light heavyweight title in 2011, he’s fought and beaten eight of the top bruisers in the sport. Quinton Jackson, Rashad Evans, Daniel Cormier and Lyoto Machida are among the Hall of Fame names on his resume.