Jon Jones Is Confident He Can Defeat Alexander Gustafsson At His Strongest Skills
UFC Light Heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones has experience a meteoric rise to the role of being arguably the UFC’s most dominant champion. Since obtaining the belt in early 2011 when he destroyed Shogun Rua, Jones has dispatched a veritable who-who’s of former 205-pound champions like Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
Not one of those big names could really even get close to Jones, and his actual toughest test was against top Middleweight contender Vitor Belfort at UFC 152, where “The Phenom” had Jones in a lot of trouble with an early armbar. Unwilling to tap, Bones weathered the storm to come back and submit Belfort, continuing his reign of dominance.
He was last seen defending his belt against Chael Sonnen in the main event of UFC 159 this April, and the mat did a lot more damage to Jones than “The American Gangster” did. Jones broke his toe in gruesome fashion in the process of thoroughly embarrassing the decorated wrestler Sonnen with an array of his own takedowns.
Jones is now scheduled to face the 6’5” Alexander Gustafsson at this weekend’s UFC 165 from Toronto, and many people think that “The Mauler” is finally the one to give Jones problems. After all, he is the only fighter who is taller than Bones, and his only loss was a submission to his training partner Phil Davis. Gustafsson has learned a lot since that day, and believes he has what it takes to wrest the belt from Jones’ iron grip.
Obviously Jones doesn’t think that to be the case, and while he acknowledges the beliefs that he’s never fought someone like Gus, Jones in fact believes that it’s actually his opponent who has never faced anyone like him. He could be right, as Jones’ funky mix of striking with almost indestructible wrestling and submissions is a tough puzzle to solve.
Jones is looking to put a mark on Gustafsson by defeating him in his strongest skill areas, something he’s made a career of doing. Jones believes that he’s previously fought and beat much more technical strikers than Gustafsson. What do you think?
Check out Jones’ pre-fight interview on Gustafsson from UFC.com:
