Apparently, Jon Jones went into his rematch with Daniel Cormier with an injury, according to Jones’ coach Mike Winkeljohn.
Despite a relatively flawless performance by Jones, capped off by a thunderous head kick, Winkeljohn insists the newly crowned champ was, in fact, nursing an arm injury.
In fact, Winkeljohn said the injury was quite serious leading into the biggest fight of “Bones” career:
“A couple of nights before the fight, he couldn’t lift his arm. He had hurt it wrestling,” Winkeljohn said during an recent Submission Radio interview. “He wrestled a little too hard with his partner and maybe from a lack of warm up, I’m not sure, but it was kind scary. It was one of those situations where when I was warming him up I’d ask the coaches and they had agreed, they were ahead of me on this, that we shouldn’t be doing a lot wrestling because I didn’t want Jon to try and have to underhook and lift with his one arm because it could potentially cause it to be hurt again and mess with his mindset. I wanted to keep that out of it and hopefully so that way if it got re-injured in the fight, the adrenaline would take over.”
“So it was kind of scary that nobody knew about it. There was an injury behind the scenes, but Jon is who he is, he’s as tough as they come and like I said, nobody beats Jon Jones but himself. Once he decides he wants to win a fight, he’s going to win.”
Jones clearly triumphed over his longtime nemesis Cormier, becoming the first man to finish DC his entire career at UFC 214 last weekend.
“Bones” called out former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar immediately following his victory over Cormier, which has captured fight fans’ collective imagination ever since.
Given Jones’ past issues making it to fight night, Winkeljohn said there was no way he was pulling out of the fight on such short notice, regardless of the extent of his arm injury.
“He just couldn’t lift it basically over his head and stuff. Of course, it’s definitely concerning,” Winkeljohn said. “You know, in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Are you going to be able to underhook with that arm? Or if not, you have to use a lot more frames and more downward pressure and circle the opposite direction, so game plan might have to be changed a little bit if it doesn’t get healed.”
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