Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive
Everything will work out as God plans it, he says to himself, and walks ahead with faith and positivity. Suffer a setback? Move forward. Facing adversity? Plow ahead. Fight a legend on short notice for the world championship? You better believe it.
This whole thing, after all, started with faith. Jon Jones was just 20 years old back in the winter of 2007, going into 2008, when he found out he was about to be a father. Jones, the defending junior college national 197-pound wrestling champion, decided he was done with school. Now, he had to be a provider. That commitment had to come before anything else.
Fighting was the means to provide chosen for him, and in this belief, he did not waver, even when reminded it took years to make big money in MMA. “It will all work out,” he often told people. And so it was that on the day his girlfriend Jessie went into labor with their first child, Leah, Jones was 250 miles away, on the road to Atlantic City, New Jersey to fight. Faced with the prospect of missing his child’s birth, Jones contemplated on the decision. Of course he wanted to be there, but the odds of returning in time for the birth seemed remote, and his family needed the money. The decision was made: he would stay and compete.
NEW YORK — With freshman verve, 
MMA Fighting will have live Twitter updates of Wednesday’s 
Shogun Rua