UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones speaks candidly about his performance at UFC 239 on Saturday against Thiago Santos.
UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones lost on one of the judge’s scorecards for the first time on Saturday at UFC 239 against Thiago Santos. Many weren’t impressed with his performance, and fans in attendance made sure to let him know through the boos during his Octagon interview with Joe Rogan.
During his post-fight media scrum, “Bones” admitted that the crowd’s reaction got to him. But at the same time, he defended the strategy he employed.
“It doesn’t feel good to be booed, but not many people know what it feels like to be in there,” Jones said (via MMA Fighting). “Not many people know what it feels like to be in there and I can’t allow them to make decisions for me. It would be disrespectful to my coaches.
“It would be disrespectful to my gift, to myself, no way. I feel like that’s a very rookie move to start switching up your strategy because someone’s booing you.”
Jones also admitted his predominantly defensive approach against Santos, instead of throwing a counter and inflict damage.
“Tonight I found myself out there playing this game that I’ve been doing all camp, which is just making sure I’m not getting hit instead of countering back right away or going to the offense,” he said. “So it was a lesson learned for me. I need to not only be sure to be just out of reach of punches and strikes, but I need to be retaliating. I got to get back to punching my teammates in the face.
“So yeah, defense did win a championship tonight, and some good offense too, though.”
For the two-time 205-pound champion, there was no sense of urgency to finish the fight, which he intends to fix as he plans to return to the Octagon at the end of the year.
“I need to talk to my coaches about just making sure that I stay fired up. Tonight I was just so relaxed,” Jones said. “I was talking and laughing and dancing and I wasn’t scared to come out here and work. And that could be a bad thing. You’ve got to be terrified a little bit to be sharp and I just felt so comfortable.
“It was working against me tonight. I had no sense of urgency to overdo anything, I was just out there cruising and winning the rounds and that’s not cool. People want to see me go out there and finish people and go hard, so I think that my comfort and familiarity with the Octagon kind of worked against me tonight.
“So I am willing to fight in December, I want to fight in December, but I’ve got to make sure that the fire is well-lit if that makes sense,” he added.
UFC president Dana White did defend Jones’ performance, while also criticizing the judge who scored the fight for Santos.