Issue 090
July 2012
By MMA and boxing correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, London.
No apologies if this comes across as a paean to the brutal artistry of Jon Jones. Jones may not have eviscerated Rashad Evans on the night of the jabbing elbow in Georgia, but you’d need a thesaurus for superlatives to do justice to the brilliance of ‘Bones’ – right down to his marrow.
Frankly, the doubters, the haters and the critics can do one. I’m beyond understanding the vitriol aimed at the 24-year-old. How can you not hold a light up to this young man, not feel a sense of admiration at his athletic genius and his abilities as a fighter?
The negatives on some of the social networking sites, and indeed on MMA website message boards, scrabbling for a strand of negativity to stick into the kid from Rochester, make no sense. He has everything. And more.
I’ve interviewed him on stage, admonished him for littering my car, spent time laughing and joking with him, and a good few hours in conversation with him trying to get inside the mind of a sportsman destined for greatness. Jones is a messenger for MMA, who could carry it to the promised land of mainstream sport.
Listen. To all MMA fans, to the wider sporting world, celebrate the skills of this man while he still decides to challenge himself in the UFC Octagon. Guarantee you one thing: when he has gone, he will be sorely missed. And yet, it is only just the beginning.
He has dealt with Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua, ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans… Dan Henderson remains the only former 205lb champion really left to destruct. Then he needs true challenges. Up at heavyweight.
Construct a top 20 in modern-day sporting greats. You can drop his name in now alongside the likes of Tiger Woods, Lionel Messi, Usain Bolt, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Valentino Rossi… And Anderson Silva.
Yet he still refers to himself as “a rookie,” and told Fighters Only in our exclusive cover story interview a couple of months back that he “can’t run, can’t catch,” and has poor athleticism. On that note, for me, Jones is the Usain Bolt of the fight world. Long, lean and supremely gifted.
He dominated Rua, finding openings in the stand-up, before finishing him on the ground; he used his length and reach to be the first to submit Rampage; he chillingly choked the fire out of ‘Dragon’ Machida, brutal in its denouement. And he used his elbows to startling effect against ‘Suga’ Rashad.
Yes, Jones still has things to learn. Yes, he does have vulnerabilities, and he could get caught, grounded and finished by another elite fighter. But he has already built up an aura. Those challenging him now don’t just want the title, they want to claim the moniker of ‘the man who defeated Jon Jones.’
Late last year ‘Big’ George Foreman – he of the grill and The Rumble In The Jungle – told me a story that I believe resonates for Jon Jones. Foreman, from the era when heavyweight greats were thicket deep, told me that looking back, he didn’t really want to be heavyweight champion of the world. The real prize was being ‘the man who beat Muhammad Ali’. It has become the same with Jones. He is the man to beat. The title is beating him.
We are witnessing greatness developing in front of our eyes. Jones has the wherewithal, to be considered the new ‘Baddest Man on the Planet’. Yet he does it all with a smile, and an easy charm. Let’s treasure him.
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