Like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there are two Jon Jones. There’s the guy the UFC pushes heavily in the media. You’ve seen him. He smiles a lot. He’s personable. He tries to say all the right things, even though, at just 24, they don’t always come out quite right. The template for this Jon Jones is clearly Georges St-Pierre, the likable Canadian champion who is the UFC’s biggest pay-per-view drawing card.
Then there is the Jon Jones who shows up to fight on Saturday nights. In the Octagon, you don’t see the public relations face of an otherworldly talent. You see the fighter. And that fighter is capital “M” mean. Jones means business in there and not the same way St-Pierre and every UFC fighter mean business. Jones will, plain and simple, hurt you. If he were an NFL player, Roger Goodell would have his agent on speed dial.
Nowhere was this more clear than his UFC 128 title win over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. Jones flirted hardcore with the rule book in that fight. If it was a makeout session, you’d say he got to second base with the Unified Rules.
Jones palmed Rua’s face, headbutted him in the stomach, attempted what seemed to be a Von Erich style “Iron Claw” and targeted Rua’s surgically repaired knee over and over again. None of this was worthy of penalty. But it was noteworthy. People in the sport took notice—Jones wasn’t just looking to win, he was looking to do damage.
There’s also a swagger to Jones in the cage that simply doesn’t exist outside of it. On the outside, he can border on socially awkward. He hasn’t quite mastered the media yet and it’s very hard for someone that good to be the perpetually humble hero all the time. In the cage, though? That’s his canvas, a place he can truly be himself.
His creativity is legendary. Spinning elbows, German suplexes and brutal manhandlings can come at any time, from almost any angle. He’s got attitude to spare. Remember how he let Lyoto Machida fall helplessly to the mat after choking him unconscious? How he shrugged Rampage off of him at the end of a round? Like a man and a child, despite Page being full grown. These moments were small in scope, but intimate and oh-so-telling.
Jon Jones is a brutal and dangerous fighter. There is no lay and pray in Jones’ game. There’s no sprawl and brawl. There’s vicious violence of the kind rarely seen, even in the Octagon. We may see it against Rashad Evans in Atlanta. And I love it.
Jones can have his cake and eat it, too. Why not be the face of civility outside the cage and our greatest purveyor of incivility in it? Life is complicated—and so is Jon Jones.
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