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In Conor McGregor vs. UFC, the Fight Was Fixed but Not Fruitless

And so it has come down to this in MMA fandom: Many folks root for letters and numbers over actual people.
This is what we learned after the recent skirmish between Conor McGregor and the UFC, the one which saw the former challenge the latter in a pub…

And so it has come down to this in MMA fandom: Many folks root for letters and numbers over actual people.

This is what we learned after the recent skirmish between Conor McGregor and the UFC, the one which saw the former challenge the latter in a public game of chicken only to be yanked out of the car before any collision.

It is a strange thing to see so many people call McGregor names for standing up for himself. He took fire from all sides. In the media, blowhard radio host Colin Cowherd (h/t SportsJoe.ie) called him “dumb.”

Among fellow fighters, flyweight Henry Cejudo was among those who offered the harshest criticism. “I think it’s good for the UFC. The UFC, they need to start stepping up and doing things like that,” he said, per MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al-Shatti. “If you think you’re higher than the UFC, if you think you’re higher than all of the other fighters, then maybe you should get pulled. So, I think it’s a good discipline.”

And of course, the Twitter echo chamber spoke.

The UFC has conditioned its followers and fighters so well that most of them don’t even know it. Fighters are generally expected to accept lightly negotiated contracts, short-notice fights, media obligations, fight kit (uniform) expectations and more with little room to maneuver.

Anyone who attempts to work outside the parameters of that system is often labeled an ingrate or a malcontent, as if those are the only options.

The fact of the matter is that this was a courageous action from McGregor. He has been gaining power and influence since the moment he first signed a UFC deal back in 2013, but this stand was always a gamble.

From the outside looking in, it doesn’t sound like he was asking for huge latitude. He wanted to limit his media obligations and concentrate on training. Coming on the heels of his first UFC defeat, it makes perfect sense. He wanted to return his focus to substance before style.

But the thing is, this isn’t even a new issue for him. Last July, in the afterglow of beating Chad Mendes for the interim featherweight belt, he reflected on the promotional load he had already been carrying for months, saying he was “absolutely sick” of doing media, that he had been home only 19 days all year while trying to manage injuries, cut weight and improve.

It was clear even then that it was starting to drive him crazy.

“You know, it’s damn hard work,” he said at the UFC 189 post-fight press conference. “But then every time I say, ‘You know what, f–k this, next time I’m not doing all this,’ and then I get handed the check and I’m like, ‘Alright then. I’ll do it one more time.’”

The man clearly reached a breaking point, but even after fighting four times in 14 months for the UFC, even after headlining three pay-per-views that did a collective total of over 3.5 million buys, according to Tapology, even after world tours, jumping weight classes and quick turnarounds, the UFC said no.

The UFC makes the schedule, and there is only a bit of wiggle room—even for the biggest name currently competing.

Now, you have to ask yourself, why? Why couldn’t it figure out another way to promote the show that didn’t demand as much of McGregor’s time this time around?

Because it’s never afraid to remind everyone that the show runs with or without them.

In the UFC, the show always comes first. That is woven into the company’s mythos. When telling the company’s history, chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta and president Dana White often note how the Fertitta brothers “spent $2 million on three letters, basically,” essentially disregarding the human competitors who had made those three letters mean something.

Fertitta also once told heavyweight Matt Mitrione the company sells the production and show ahead of the stars and storylines, as if the latter were all interchangeable parts.

While it should be said that the UFC brass has done an impressive job maneuvering its assets and manpower in often-complicated circumstances, the decision to cut McGregor out of UFC 200 was probably not one of the more difficult ones it’s had to make.

Essentially, it is betting that its three letters and No. 200 are meaningful enough to make up whatever financial ground was lost in McGregor’s removal.

While there have been all kinds of wild reports about how much the UFC was leaving on the table by taking McGregor off the card—ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell suggested around $45 million—those numbers are mostly nonsense.

If McGregor had actually retired, it would be losing money. But he always planned on returning, so the UFC always knew that payday would come back around.

Think of it this way: If the UFC had internal projections of 1.5 million buys for a McGregor-headlined UFC 200 and 400,000 buys for UFC 201, it would expect 1.9 million buys between the two.

Now, with McGregor off the former, it may lower its UFC 200 projections to around 1 million, but what happens to UFC 201 if it puts McGregor on it? It suddenly becomes a huge event that has the mainstream sporting world’s eyeballs on it due to his celebrity. It’s quite possible, maybe even likely, that it surpasses 1 million buys and bests UFC 200.

In all reality, it is actually a better business scenario for the UFC to continue its momentum with two strong-performing shows than putting all its efforts into one card. It simply pushes the sales somewhere else.

On the other hand, it is McGregor who actually stands to suffer. With Forbes.com’s Matt Connolly reporting that McGregor makes between $3-5 per PPV buy, the difference between headlining a show that sells 1.5 million units versus one that sells, say, 1.1 million is seven figures in bonus money.

The unfortunate part of this is that it reduces McGregor to a pawn in a game of control.

McGregor’s only real leverage is his fame. UFC contracts are fairly iron-clad, leaving the athletes to play by the UFC’s rules.

Yes, that is what they signed up for, but we all know that special exceptions get made for special people. If everyone played by the same rules, McGregor would be making the same money as everyone else.

He has done the tours and the media and built himself into a worldwide attraction. So he gambled and lost. So David failed to slay Goliath. There was a time when we prized that kind of audacity, the nerve to fight the unwinnable battle.

We shine a light on issues related to fighter pay and fighter treatment, and people wonder how the athletes are ever going to gain some ground. It’s not going to be by saying yes to every demand, by muting their voices and refusing to flex whatever power and leverage they may have.

McGregor lost this particular fight, but at least he tried.

Most everyone else sits there and silently stews, praying and hoping something will change. Both actions may have had the same results, but only one of them actually tried to do something.

The loudest and the brashest may have lost, but in this fight, at least he competed.

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Benson Henderson’s Bellator Debut Lands with a Thud, but There Is a Bright Side

In every sport with free agency, there are distinct schools of thought regarding its effectiveness. Is it better to pay huge sums of money to someone and risk him losing his edge due to complacency or to build from within through what is often a slow c…

Bellator took the plunge recently with Benson Henderson, signing the former UFC champion to a multi-fight deal and immediately plugging him into a main event championship match with its current welterweight kingpin, Russian Andrey Koreshkov.

As seems to happen in this wild and wacky sport of ours, not much went according to plan. Not for Bellator and certainly not for Henderson. You might say it was the opposite of “Smooth.”

Outsized and overmatched, Henderson lost in a lopsided unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring it a shutout against him.

On the business end, there were struggles too. According to the MMA Report, the show averaged just 618,000 viewers on Spike, significantly below its season average of over 800,000.

Before you go concluding it’s a double-whammy, yes, Bellator’s free-agency gamble took a blow, but there is a bright side too: The world now understands Koreshkov’s legitimacy in a way it didn’t just a few weeks ago. Koreshkov brutalized an ex-champ who has wins over Gilbert Melendez, Nate Diaz, Frankie Edgar, Jorge Masvidal and Donald Cerrone, just to name a few.

“The way I look at it, [free-agent signees and homegrown talent] are all on our team,” Strikeforce President Scott Coker told Bleacher Report in the aftermath of the show. “They’re all here to help Bellator build. It’s our job to put on big fights and great fights, and I think you saw the depth of the roster. There were some great fights. It was a fight card we’re proud of. We’ve done the fun fights, and we’ll continue to do the fun fights, but I’d say 90 percent of our fights are fights like this where you’ve got hardcore, real-deal guys going at it.”

While it would be easy to dismiss this encapsulation as promoter spin, Coker has a point in that we must go past immediate reactions to form a true assessment of what happened, and whether it’s good or bad. To fairly examine the night, it must be reframed within the context of the bigger picture.

For one thing, Bellator has come a long way since it first signed away a major free agent—Roger Huerta—from the UFC back in 2008. That splash into free agency was a calculated gamble aimed at drawing attention, but for a number of reasons, the move eventually fizzled. In fact, when Huerta made his second start in Boston as part of a decent card that also featured Eddie Alvarez, only about 700 people showed up to the Wang Theatre in Boston.

The attendance was sparse and, in a way, shocking.

I remember talking to Huerta a year or so later, listening to him acknowledge how taken aback he was by the shift. In months, he’d gone from competing before 10,000-plus screaming fans to fewer than 1,000 dispassionate ones. It’s the kind of jarring surprise that can make you question your own decision-making.

In some ways it was an illustration of the distance Bellator would have to travel just to reach a level where it could be in the MMA conversation alongside the UFC.

When you fast forward to Bellator 153, you can see how far it’s come.

All these years later, it’s a different time. Henderson’s signing received plenty of fanfare, and his arrival drew a fair amount of media attention, including from ESPN. His walk down the Mohegan Sun ramp was celebrated and celebratory, and there was a full crowd to trumpet his arrival. Visually, it all looked great.

Contrast that with what was happening a few years before, and you must conclude that Bellator has made many strides in narrowing the gap between it and the UFC, even if it remains wider than it would like it to be. Part of that stems from past free-agency signings changing prevailing notions.

These days, the difference between the two organizations is not necessarily in the audience size, or even so much in the caliber of fighters, as Koreshkov proved by dispatching the former UFC champ.

“In my opinion, Bellator fighters are as good as the UFC fighters,” Koreshkov told Bleacher Report after the bout. “And Bellator champions can beat UFC champions.”

The difference is in the experience.

The fight between Henderson and Koreshkov did not generate the kind of electricity that most major UFC main events do. This is a fairly minor criticism; most fans seemed to enjoy the fight and popped for several of Koreshkov’s power strikes along with Henderson’s gutsy performance.

But it’s also something that separates the UFC from Bellator as an entertainment vehicle.

In the UFC, an event is often a slow build to a rolling explosion of passionate reactions. Watching Bellator, the reaction comes in flickers.

This isn’t something that can be changed in a day. Under Coker, the product has improved. But stories and superstars push the sport forward, and those are not so easy to come by.

Bellator hoped someone like Henderson could help fill that void.

Last Friday, he certainly showed his trademark toughness, but when fans leave a fight with that as the prevailing memory of a performance, it’s a sure sign that athlete suffered through a rough night.

But is it back to the drawing board for Coker and Co.? Not completely. Koreshkov has that terrifyingly stoic disposition that can be strangely magnetic, along with the willingness to speak his mind.

Check, for instance, his comments regarding Ben Askren, the man who provided him his lone loss.

“If we fight again, I kill him,” he said.

“Did you say, ‘I kill him?’” I asked.

“I kill him,” he said. “Really.”

It’s the kind of thing that might normally gain traction in the MMA space but was drowned out by the Conor McGregor soap opera and the return of Jon Jones.

It is the kind of dilemma Bellator often gets faced with. Perpetually chasing down the giant and playing with a slim margin for error.

For the Bellator brass, Friday night wasn’t a best-case scenario, but it also wasn’t a washout. A little at a time, Bellator has gained ground. A little at a time, it’s altering perceptions. A lot has changed in eight years. A lot is still changing.

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Jon Jones Dominates Despite Ring Rust, Signaling Real Trouble for Daniel Cormier

Extreme talent is, in a way, a curse; a crushing weight of expectation that follows you around in every moment, through every circumstance. It’s a phenomenon Jon Jones knows well. He was a transcendent talent from the beginning, and even through t…

Saturday marked the end of the longest layoff of his career—476 days since he defeated Daniel Cormier, the man he had been scheduled to face at UFC 197. It was supposed to be the completion of the circle, Jones’ return to glory and the UFC light-heavyweight championship. Instead, he got what many viewed as a tuneup bout, this despite the fact that his replacement opponent, Ovince Saint Preux, came into the match ranked No. 6 in the world.

A tuneup bout.

Against No. 6 in the world.

These are the kind of expectations he faces.

The fight followed that blueprint. As expected, Jones won, capturing every round on the scorecards in Las Vegas.

He did this despite the fact that he was far from his best self. He was tentative and rusty in the early going, and his timing was off by a tick.

His face said it all at the final horn with a grimace and a quick shake of the head. As if to ensure we weren’t incorrectly reading his body language, he turned directly to the TV camera and said, “I have a lot of work to do.”

Duly noted.

You would have thought it was all bad news.

The reality of the situation is that as great as Jones is—and he may well be the best fighter ever—he is human. He bleeds. He occasionally makes bad life decisions, and, yes, he too can suffer through ring rust.

In a division where the margin for error is slim, Jones wins and wins and wins. Even when he is at his worst, he is capable of dominating. The final scores against Saint Preux were 50-44, 50-45, 50-45.

What does that mean for Cormier, who was sitting cageside to witness it all? Jones has already beaten him, and has done so fairly decisively. In a way, this twist was cruel. Cormier would have had a better chance to beat Jones coming off this long layoff. Instead, he’ll get Jones with five rounds under his belt.

And you could already see his progression as the fight went on.

While Jones was slow on the trigger over the course of the first 15 minutes—”Really I was just watching instead of reacting,” he told UFC announcer Joe Rogan after the fight—he seemed to get loose over the last 10, taking down Saint Preux multiple times, slamming those sharp elbows into OSP’s mug, smashing him to the body and legs with an onslaught of kicks.

By the end, Saint Preux’s left arm was dangling, broken, and he was celebrating just surviving the 25 minutes.

It was the kind of in-fight recalibration Jones often pulls off but rarely gets credit for, and it bodes well for his rematch with Cormier.

“I would have beat him pretty good,” Jones said of his original opponent. “I was tuned up to fight Cormier. I had techniques, angles and ideas we’d been working for DC for over seven months. I’ve been training for one fighter and they throw me this heavy hitter. I believe I can beat DC right now.”

You couldn’t blame Jones for his slight troubles with Saint Preux. The matchup, after all, came about as something of a fluke.

After Cormier was injured in training, the UFC looked up and down its light-heavyweight top 10, and Saint Preux was the highest-ranked fighter available.

While Saint Preux has had some impressive finishes, he came into the bout with only one truly notable victory, when he knocked out Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in November 2014. In his two other bouts against ranked opponents, he lost to Glover Teixeira and Ryan Bader, respectively, two guys Jones has manhandled in the past.

Those previous results led to Saturday’s expectations, even though Jones had so many distractions between then and now.

Jones’ life since his last bout has landed him in the tabloids as often as sports sections. Just days after defeating Cormier at UFC 182, it was announced that he failed a pre-fight drug test after cocaine metabolites were found in his sample. He soon checked into rehab and stayed for only one day, drawing criticism from those who questioned his motivation for entering in the first place.

In April, he was involved in a hit-and-run, later turning himself in and eventually pleading guilty to a felony charge of leaving the scene of an accident. That incident led to the UFC stripping him of his belt. In January 2016, he was cited for driving without a license, among other infractions. And just last month, he was arrested after being ticketed for drag racing, a potential violation of his probation.

With most of those troubles behind him, Jones finally got to concentrate on fighting. And now, with his ring rust behind him, he can finally concentrate on Cormier. The expectation, after all, is set.

“I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better,” he said in the post-fight press conference. “I think you guys will see that when I fight Daniel Cormier. I’ve been working so hard to beat Daniel. You’ll see that. I feel like I’m going to pick him part, that I’m gone to outwrestling him. I feel like I’m going to beat him up really, really bad.”

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Conor McGregor v. the UFC? Making Sense of a Notorious ‘Retirement’ Announcement

Conor McGregor “retired” on Tuesday.
Air quotes, because he’s 27 years old and loves making and spending money, and because, MMA, y’all.
Really, nobody outside of McGregor’s inner circle knows exactly what’s happenin…

Conor McGregor “retired” on Tuesday.

Air quotes, because he’s 27 years old and loves making and spending money, and because, MMA, y’all.

Really, nobody outside of McGregor’s inner circle knows exactly what’s happening and if he’s serious about this sudden goodbye. This is, after all, the man who once laid out a surprise-ending scenario, telling Irish MMA site Severe MMA: “I’ll walk away from this game, I’ll set it ablaze and walk away. And that’s it.”

In a way, that’s exactly what he’s done—dropped jaws on his way out the door. But who really saw this coming? Not even him, apparently. The guy who inspired the nickname “Mystic Mac” for his propensity to predict the future had agreed less than three weeks ago to face Nate Diaz at UFC 200 on July 9.

To make sense of it all, I’m joined by my colleague, senior writer Chad Dundas.

Mike Chiappetta: I guess the relevant question here is, What the $#% is happening? If this is not a moment worthy of an expletive, what is? McGregor’s retirement announcement, with 152,000 retweets and counting, has more RTs than Kobe Bryant’s retirement tweet. This is a huge story. And still it’s one with little clarity.

Since thanking us “for the cheese,” McGregor has not explained his decision at all, while we should always take the UFC’s official viewpoint with a grain (or a pound) of salt. Meanwhile, reporters have offered multiple theories that all make some sense, and in a way, those numerous explanations might all yield some validity. After all, it is usually not one single thing that causes a star at the peak of his earnings power to walk away from millions.

Maybe he was deeply affected by the recent death of MMA fighter Joao Carvalho. Maybe he didn’t want to give up training time for a press tour. Maybe he thought his transcendent star power was worth more money. Isn’t it possible all of these things built up to the point where he got fed up?

Chad Dundas: As annoyed as I am already by the rampant speculation clogging my social media timeline since McGregor dropped his cryptic tweet Tuesday afternoon, I’m afraid this conversation calls for even more guesswork. We simply don’t know what’s going on with the Irishman right now, and his silence on the topic—which is uncharacteristic enough to make us believe, whatever it is, it’s something weird—isn’t helping.

But the notion that a man who is perhaps the most media-savvy fighter in the history of MMA—and a man truly in love with the sound of his own voice—would legitimately retire via cheeky tweet one day after flying to Iceland to continue training for UFC 200 is, frankly, absurd. Nothing about McGregor’s initial tweet, the dead air following it or the wink-wink, nudge-nudge responses of his coaches and teammates leads me to believe that McGregor is actually done fighting.

No, I think he’s trying to send a message to someone here.

What that message is, unfortunately, is anybody’s guess so far.

All we know is that he was booked for a fleet of media obligations in Las Vegas this week, and that at some point he decided he wasn’t going to make them. Maybe it was because he wanted more money, maybe not. Maybe it was because he felt shaken after witnessing Carvalho’s death following an event in Ireland a little more than a week ago, maybe not.

But we know he and the UFC crossed wires over this issue. McGregor posted his tweet, and then the UFC did as the UFC does. It “pulled him from the event” likely to show the world it is still boss.

What’s your gut telling you, Mike?

Chiappetta: There’s not a bone in my body that believes this is the end, mostly because of the unlayering of this episode. First, McGregor, who is as spectacularly verbose as anyone who’s ever fought, says goodbye in a scant 13 words. Then, the UFC tries to steal ownership of the narrative by claiming it dropped him from the card. Obviously, friction there is playing a role.

Really, is anyone too surprised? The UFC has basically feuded with almost every crossover star who has come out of the promotion at some point, from Randy Couture and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson to Tito Ortiz. Heck, they even denied Georges St-Pierre the classy exit he deserved when he tried to bow out.

While UFC President Dana White has attempted to downplay any problems between them, his unwillingness to take McGregor’s retirement at face value suggests all is not quiet on the Irish front.

Even if White’s account was true, it suggests a rift. The UFC asked McGregor to do something he didn’t want to do. They tried to muscle each other into backing off, and McGregor lost that game of chicken. Does that sound like a good relationship?

My gut is telling me this might last a while, but it won’t last forever. McGregor’s ambitions were just too vast to be completely snuffed out in a huff.

Dundas: In a career where you could argue that McGregor has basically out-maneuvered the UFC at every turn, I feel like his ongoing silence on this issue constitutes his first real public-relations mistake.

He’s been so good on the mic throughout his short career inside the Octagon that his sudden willingness to allow the UFC to shape this story feels jarring. The fight company is getting its normal people out to all the normal places to get its side of the story out there, and so far McGregor remains mum.

On Wednesday, White appeared on The Herd with Colin Cowherd—a UFC-friendly media platform if there ever was one—to deny a rift between the promotion and McGregor. He said this current snafu isn’t about money but commented that McGregor needs to clear up this retirement issue soon—or else.

On at least that last point, I agree with White. McGregor can’t stay silent for much longer, or he runs the risk of losing control of his own story. It’s a classic fighter mistake, and one I thought McGregor was too savvy to make. That, perhaps more than anything else going on here, makes me wonder what’s really happening in the mind of Mystic Mac.

Chiappetta: But here’s the thing, Chad: We’re wondering. And as long as that curiosity remains, McGregor has our attention. The UFC can send out its talking heads to offer their version of events, but this isn’t a typical situation where they can drown out a single voice.

If and when McGregor chooses to explain himself, the sports world will be listening. If he held a press conference timed to coincide with the UFC 197 main event Saturday night or the UFC 200 main event in July, we’d find a way to watch it. Let’s hope when the time comes, he has something important to say.

It’s true: UFC 200 doesn’t need him. The UFC doesn’t, either. The promotion always chugs along and manages the terrain whether rocky or smooth. It has that ultimate leverage. But McGregor has his star power and a willingness to speak his mind, and those are powerful tools he can exploit to right any wrong he might feel he suffered. Or he can just shelve them and…live a quiet life?

The crazy thing about this whole episode is that almost no one accepts the possibility that he is actually and truly retired. In a way, that would be the most shocking outcome to this whole thing.

Dundas: Indeed.

Imagine if McGregor really did walk away at this moment. For starters, he’d be about the first person in the recorded history of combat sports to play his professional career exactly right. He got in, became a superstar, made a lot of money and got out with his faculties intact. It’s the exact thing every single person says professional fighters ought to do and the very thing nobody ever actually does.

McGregor’s brief, wondrous time in the UFC would surely be enshrined as one of the greatest—or at least most unique—careers not just in MMA but perhaps any sport. Admittedly, there’s an aspect of this that makes part of me hope he really is gone for good. It would put a perfect and perfectly weird exclamation point on all the other amazing things he’s done.

I am 99 percent sure we will see McGregor fight in the UFC again. If we don’t, however, at least we should all feel fortunate to have witnessed him take the game by storm and then vanish with the same sudden intensity with which he appeared.

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With No Title Fight and No Bitter Rival, Is Jon Jones Prime for a Letdown?

Throughout his professional life, Jon Jones has exhibited a proclivity to goof up. His transgressions have been numerous, from a hit-and-run to a DWI arrest to a positive cocaine test and beyond, yet somehow he has avoided torpedoing his career. And he’s not exactly holding on by a thread. An amazing thing about him is that when the time comes to compete, his distractions haven’t been distractions at all.

The troubles all seem to evaporate when Jones gets to work. In the Octagon, he is MMA’s Mr. Perfect.

It is a dichotomy that is both head-scratching and stunning, bringing a new context to the success he’s had. In 22 fights, he’s been soul-crushingly dominant, powering through both opponents and the brief moments of adversity they’ve provided. Even his one “loss” was a one-sided bashing that ended in a disqualification.

Indeed, his biggest challenges often come in periods of mundanity and routine.

Which is why Saturday night’s UFC 197 matchup comes with a rare question mark. Almost since the day he stepped foot into the UFC for the first time—ironically, in a short-notice pairing—Jones has faced one significant opponent after another. Since defeating Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in March 2011, he’s been involved in eight straight title bouts.

Ovince Saint Preux is a departure from everything that has repeatedly spurred Jones to rise to the occasion. Saint Preux is not a big name, does not offer a fearsome reputation and is not considered a particularly dangerous threat. Depending on sites and betting lines, Jones is as much as a 1-6 favorite, per Odds Shark.

To Jones, OSP is an unknown commodity. OSP is not DC. Prior to the fight announcement, Jones said he had met Saint Preux once before, but other than that, OSP was totally off his radar.

“Outside of that I honestly had never seen him fight once. Not even a highlight video,” he said during a recent media conference call.

It’s quite a change for someone who was preparing to restake his claim to the title belt that he never actually lost. Daniel Cormier may hold it, but he is largely considered something of an impostor king, merely good enough to satisfy most in the absence of the rightful ruler.

By beating Saint Preux, Jones will get an interim belt, but what could that mean to someone who’s already held the real thing, and for so long? Not much, probably, leaving some to wonder whether the bout has the makings of a trap fight.

Jones, after all, has acknowledged lackadaisical approaches in his past, most notably in his closest contest, a five-round decision against Alexander Gustafsson in which he later claimed to radio host Jim Rome that he went “80 percent.”

It’s easy to envision a scenario where he falls back into the same mindset.

While he recently explained that he’s immersed himself in studying Saint Preux over the last few days, it can’t be an easy switch to flip a man from relative insignificance to imminent threat. Because of that, Jones will again be forced to play a mental game with himself, essentially the same one he’s played in the past.

For Jones, there are times it’s about the opponent and there are times it’s about him. This time, it’s more of the latter. Saint Preux, for all of his physical gifts, has never quite flashed the next-level skills and fight IQ to worry a transcendent talent like Jones.

Still, OSP has enough strength, power and durability to offer the resistance to make things interesting. Enough to make a disinterested participant look bad and maybe even ruin his night.

Jones was invested in Cormier in a way that Saint Preux simply cannot bring out of him. The Cormier rivalry was organic. Prior to their first fight, the Louisianan was undefeated and an Olympian, and he could match or exceed some of Jones’ top accomplishments. That raised the stakes. Even though Jones has already defeated him, seeing Cormier parade the belt around—a belt that is ostensibly his—creates another territorial battle that does not exist with anyone but him.

In a way, Saint Preux is another distraction on the way to the real goal.

“One thing with me, I’ve been really fortunate to have a strong mind toward fighting and no matter what’s going on, I’m able to throw it all aside and just compete at a really high level consistently,” Jones said on the recent conference call.

That is true. It’s not one of the things he said because he thinks it’s what the world wants to hear. But it’s also something he’s going to have to summon again Saturday.

After all of his court cases, emotional upheaval, weight lifting and training camp, there’s no DC waiting for him at the end. There’s no undisputed title. It’s Jones against Saint Preux, which is to say it’s Jones against himself. That’s been the source of both his greatest achievements and biggest letdowns.

Until now he’s been able to separate his personal and professional lives. He claims to be sober and focused, and any decent person hopes it to be true. And any curious person has to wonder how such a change would affect an outlook. Sobriety gives one more time to think and reflect and assess life and your place in it.

When this fight was announced, Jones said a curious thing about it.

Speaking to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Jones said:

I just told Lorenzo [Fertitta], whoever you need me to fight, I want to make things right for [the cancellation of] UFC 151. I want to do something for my fans, something positive. I know people who have been saving up months to make it out to Vegas for this fight. I know guys who, this is their anniversary gift or birthday gift from people, and I was like, you know what? I’ve put my fans through so much already. I need to get out there and just put it on the line. So I said I’ll fight anybody.

So this is different, and this is risky. Jones might just blow out Saint Preux on Saturday, but what if he doesn’t? What if things get testy and grimy? Will he still be able to summon that final gear that allowed him to grit his way out Vitor Belfort’s armbar and spinning-back-elbow Alexander Gustafsson to Wobblytown when the chips were down?

Is the motivation the same when it’s no longer for you or for the highest stakes?

Only Jones knows the answer to that. He also knows that his words don’t really matter. Not to the legal system, and certainly not in the cage. In both instances, only his actions can prove that his approach has matured.

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Don’t Look Now, but Junior Dos Santos Is a Real Heavyweight Contender Again

Junior dos Santos made his name with his boxing. Fast hands, shifty feet and power to burn brought him to the top before everything suddenly began unraveling.
Then, three losses in five fights seemed to signal a shockingly quick end. Dos Santos, after…

Junior dos Santos made his name with his boxing. Fast hands, shifty feet and power to burn brought him to the top before everything suddenly began unraveling.

Then, three losses in five fights seemed to signal a shockingly quick end. Dos Santos, after all, wasn’t just losing, but showing holes that had not previously existed. From being taken down repeatedly to being battered and then finished twice, dos Santos suffered significant and sustained damage, making a return to form unreasonable at best, unlikely at worst.

We should have known better. We should have known the man who has walked out to the “Rocky” theme song his entire career would have at least one comeback story in him, that he would make another run to the top.

The former UFC heavyweight champion is a legit contender again. That is for sure after he pulverized Ben Rothwell for five full rounds in earning a masterful unanimous-decision victory.

“Write it down, I’m going to be champion again,” he told Fox Sports backstage reporter John Gooden after the UFC Fight Night headliner held in Zagreb, Croatia.

Practically left behind on the scrap heap a few months ago after being knocked out by Alistair Overeem, dos Santos is indeed right back in the confusing mix at the top. Currently ranked at No. 5, he’ll no doubt move up a least one slot ahead of Rothwell. And with a victory over reigning champ Fabricio Werdum, a rematch is an easy storyline sell for the UFC in the future.

With Overeem, Stipe Miocic and Cain Velasquez ahead of him in the current pecking order, dos Santos will probably need to win at least one more time to get another crack at the belt, but he’s set himself up about as well as he can.

Werdum and Miocic will square off for the belt in May, Overeem has Andrei Arlovski lined up on May 8 and Velasquez has a July bout with Travis Browne.

Any combination of chaos among that group can vault dos Santos to the front of the line.

But that is for the future.

While dos Santos needs a few things to break in his favor, he handled his own business with deft. The performance was vintage, showing off the benefits of reuniting with his longtime coach Luiz Dorea, a preacher of body battering. Dos Santos showed intelligence, timing and variety, bombarding Rothwell from all angles.

Due to small gloves, fighters tend to become headhunters and dos Santos was no different after his early UFC success, falling in love with his power. On Sunday in Zagreb, he bucked that trend to great effect. According to FightMetric stats, a full 40 percent of his strikes targeted the body, a number significantly higher than the MMA norm. By comparison, Rothwell tried just 6 percent of his strikes to the body.

What fighters tend to forget is how much more accurate body strikes are. Dos Santos, for instance, landed 92 of his 100 body strikes thrown.

“It’s always good to go to the body, especially when fighting a huge guy like him,” he said in the post-fight press conference. “You can’t collide with those guys so I used my footwork, threw some hard jabs and punches. It worked well, and thank God I won.”

The body-striking style doesn’t just score points; it also plays the dual role of slowing down an opponent, as it did to Rothwell, making him tentative and putting dos Santos in the driver’s seat for most of the way.

The first round was the most competitive, but as the volume piled up dos Santos began to separate himself from Rothwell, effectively circling on the outside and beating Rothwell to the punch (or kick) time and again. Jabs, crosses, uppercuts, he had them working on multiple planes, forcing Rothwell to repeatedly change his sight lines. As a result, Rothwell connected on just 36 percent of his strikes.

“I can’t go away from boxing,” dos Santos said in the post-fight press conference. “I have to know jiu-jitsu and wrestling but I’m a boxing guy. I have to keep it there. I’m more confident. I’m feeling good. At this time now we’re putting everything in the right place and that’s why I’m saying I’m going to be champion again, and it’s not going to take too long.”

While the moment was transcendent for dos Santos, it was a monumental disappointment for Rothwell, a 15-year veteran who has scraped and clawed his way towards contender status, winning four in a row before Sunday, capped by a shocking submission victory over Josh Barnett.

Rothwell seemed to be on the verge of a title shot, but he was never able to get on track with his offense and even after falling behind, he did not display urgency, although he was undoubtedly slowed by all of dos Santos’ offense. Rothwell was sent to the hospital for observation following the bout.

That is the parity of the heavyweight division. Dos Santos has losses to Overeem and Velasquez, but he’s beaten both Werdum and Miocic. Overeem beat dos Santos but lost to Rothwell. Miocic hasn’t beaten anyone in the top five but is fighting for the belt. Velasquez? He has a hard enough time staying healthy.

It’s a bit like chaos, and in this madness, of what can we be sure? Not much, as it turns out. Just when it looked like dos Santos was done, he’s right back in the mix.

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