Issue 052
July 2009
From dealing with the loss of a dream to the building of a new life, Jon ‘Bones’ Jones has had an eventful couple of years.
As the 21-year-old gets ready for an appearance on UFC 100, he explains how, with a spot in a top wrestling university practically secure, an unplanned pregnancy destroyed his dreams. “I was dating a girl for about four or five years. I was supposed to go wrestle in Iowa State University – in my freshman year I won the nationals and registered in my sophomore year. I was getting ready to transfer to one of the world’s biggest wrestling colleges, and the summer I was supposed to leave I found out that I was going to be a father,” he says. “I ended up never going to Iowa.”
With the numerous wrestling titles he had won suddenly made worthless, Jones says he felt he had lost everything when he found out he was to be a father. “It felt like a lost opportunity, I felt like a loser. Here I am, a national wrestling champ, my team were national champs, and every one of my team were transferring out to these huge colleges and the word was out, ‘Jon got someone pregnant, he’s not going to Iowa State.’”
Committed to his relationship and his child (a baby daughter named Leah), Jon struggled to find something to fill the gap in his life left by his wrestling career. “I felt really, really empty. Wrestling was my life, I didn’t know what to do without it. Mixed martial arts just completely filled that void – I felt complete again.”
While many wrestlers see MMA as a viable and lucrative career once their amateur status comes to an end, the thought hadn’t even occurred to Jones. His entry into MMA was more down to fate than a desire to step into the cage. “I had taken a picture of myself with my fists up for my MySpace page. There was this really geeky kid, you know? A nerdy guy, he wrote me on MySpace, he said, ‘Hey Jon, you don’t know me but I followed your wrestling career and my cousin owns a mixed martial arts gym, and I think you’d be a great fighter when your wrestling career comes to a close.’ I jumped right in and got in touch with the team I’m with now.”
The gym answered his query and that same day Jones headed down to the BombSquad Gym in Cortland in upstate New York, took off his wrestling boots and stepped onto the mat for his first training session. “I had confidence in myself, I was in my prime physically. I was in great shape and had been training to go to Iowa State, and I actually did pretty good. My first day I ended up blacking up the eye of this kid who is now one of my great workout partners!” Once he’d had his first taste of MMA, that was it, Jones was hooked. “I’ve always been the kind of guy who once I get my mind on something, I’m going to do it, or once I sign my name to something I’ll do it 100% and give it my best shot.”
Jones’ quick and devastating rise through the ranks of the local Northeast scene saw him rack up six wins in exactly three months, with five of those wins coming by KO or TKO. In fact, Jones fought his first four fights in only five weeks. The time from his entry into the sport to his first UFC appearance totaled 119 days. It’s no wonder people are tipping him to be the next big thing.
Since signing for the UFC Jones has fought twice, taking his undefeated record to 8-0-0. He fought (and dominated) the Renzo Grace-trained BJJ black belt Andre Gusmao and thrashed Stephan Bonnar, one of the UFC’s true warhorses. Though he won both those fights on the judge’s scorecards, he thrilled the fans with a visual treat of spinning kicks, flying knees and high-amplitude throws. When he dropped Bonnar with a spinning elbow, UFC matchmaker Joe Silva could be seen literally jumping up and down with excitement at ringside. “It’s a spectator sport, and I do a lot of it for the fans,” says Jones. “I train things that look good, because hey, that’s why people buy video games. This is a cool sport, I’m trying to do my best, not just squeak out a win, but look to end fights and do cool things, give people their money’s worth. If I’ve got to be that guy who risks things by doing flashy moves, I’m willing to be that guy, because I know the fans appreciate it.”
Much has been said of Jones’ unorthodox striking style, but few realize that it is mostly self-taught. Jones scours the internet for clips and then replicates them in the Octagon, but he also takes plenty of inspiration from two of the UFC’s top fighters. “Anderson Silva and GSP – they have two completely different styles. Georges is so well rounded, he sticks to the basics and doesn’t make mistakes. He’s very slick. His general game planning and the way he goes about winning, I love it. Anderson Silva, I look up to him more because of the way he strikes, the way he always thinks outside of the box and the way he looks for different, funky openings.”
One of Jones’ earliest inspirations was the Brazilian Muay Thai specialist ‘Shogun’ Rua. “I watched his old fights and the time he won the Pride Grand Prix tournament – his ambition, and how young he was – that really inspired me to go out there and be a beast of a fighter. Shogun was a good role model for me.” That hero worship has disappeared somewhat for Jones, especially considering they are in the same weight division in the UFC. “Now that we’re in the same weight class and we could possibly fight each other, I’ve kind of lost a bit of that, and he’s lost a little of his fire too.” It isn’t impossible to imagine that, should Jones continue with his present rate of success, the two could one day fight each other. “There is totally the chance that we could meet. I’d be honored to take that fight, I used to watch hours of film of him. To consider myself worthy to be in the ring with him…” Jones let’s the last sentence trail off as he contemplates what it would be like to meet Rua in the Octagon.
Though he’s enjoying every moment of his MMA career, he has had to sacrifice a few things on his path to a professional career. “I moved from the town I was raised in because I was getting sick of all these new best friends and all these people telling me I was going to be the next champion of the world. I moved to a completely different town where I don’t know anyone, I just try to train really hard and stay focused.
“I guess my plan, and it may be everyone else’s plan, is to stay focused and stay humble. There is some guy out there right now to beat me, just like I’m the young guy training to beat Rashad, or whoever has the belt when the time comes. Even though my career is going really well right now, it means nothing, it means absolutely nothing. When people get comfortable, a lot of these bigger names, they go out a lot, drink a lot and party. You hear about them doing dumb things, they all move to Vegas and they try and be celebrities instead of being a fighter.”
Jones thinks of himself as a martial artist first and a fighter second, and tries to live by the ethical code he feels a true martial artist should aspire to. “I believe in the discipline and respect of being a martial artist. A real black belt is not a black belt because he knows everything, but because he realizes how much he doesn’t know and how much he needs to know.”
With his unshakeable focus and unnatural athletic ability, Jones looks set to go on to big things. In fact, he’s certain of it. “It’s been a really wild, unbelievable experience [fighting in the UFC]. It’s like a perfect testimony that dreams can come true, and that if you put your mind to things, you make things happen. That’s what sets me apart; my hunger for the belt. I already believe it’s going to happen.”
Jon Jones’ favorite fighting videos
As Jones has picked up most of his striking from YouTube, we wanted to know what his favorite fighting videos are. “Muhammad Ali, you can just type his name into a search engine,” Jones says. “I learnt a lot from him, I liked his self-confidence. I don’t like the way he talks, he was so arrogant, but if you can look past that, he was so confident in himself, and that’s what I learned from him, just that if you believe in yourself the sky is the limit. Ali was the first guy I got into, I tried to incorporate the way he fought, the way he moved, everything.
“I also really like K-1. You can find Grand Prix tournaments, some of the best Muay Thai fighters who have ever lived going at it. It really is like a seminar, and I truly believe I’ve been trained by some of the best fighters who have ever lived because they showed me their moves, they showed me exactly what they did. I watch it three, four, five, six times, I see the timing, I see what he was looking for, I see how they set it up. It’s just a learning experience. There is so much knowledge in my head that I just can’t wait to pull off!”
