Tag Archives: Jones

Jon Jones defends belt and looks to get past year one

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Jones aims to extend his year-long win streak

Jon 'Bones' Jones

LAS VEGAS, NV – NOVEMBER 30: Mixed martial artist Jon Jones holds the Fighter of the Year award at the Fighters Only World Mixed Martial Arts Awards 2011 at The Pearl concert theater at the Palms Casino Resort November 30, 2011 in Las …
Copyright Getty Images

Posted: 12/09/2011
Last Updated: 14 hours and 18 minutes ago

  • By BOB EMANUEL JR, Scripps Howard News Service

Although his work is not yet done for the year, Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion Jon Jones already has turned in one of the most impressive calendar years in the brief history of mixed martial arts.

Jones dispatched a top contender in Ryan Bader in early February via a second-round choke. Just six weeks later, he ran through Mauricio “Shogun” Rua with a third-round TKO to capture his first UFC championship.

A hand injury delayed his next bout until September, when he returned to defeat another former UFC light heavyweight champion, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, with a submission in the fourth round.

Saturday night, Jones will attempt to knock off another former light heavyweight champion when he faces Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida in the main event of UFC 140 in Toronto (Pay-per-view, 9 p.m. Eastern).

“It’s been a great year,” Jones said. “I’m not looking at 2012 yet. I feel I still have this opportunity to do something in 2011 by beating these former champions. That’s my primary goal right now.”

Jones, a native of Rochester, N.Y., said he believes he is ready for Machida, whose only losses in 19 fights came to Rua and Jackson.

“I fought a lot this year,” Jones said. “I learned a lot about myself, about how to train better, how to eat better and all these types of things. I’ve taken all the knowledge that I’ve had from the Ryan Bader training camp, from the Shogun camp, from the Rampage camp. This is the last one of the year. I’ve just been growing so much from all these camps. I think this has been one of my most educating camps. Everything’s in order.”

The card also features several other former champions, including a rematch between former heavyweight champions Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Mir defeated Nogueira via TKO in 2008 to win the UFC interim heavyweight championship.

Mir, who defeated Mirko Filipovic and Roy Nelson in the past 15 months, said he believes he could move back into contention for a potential third title run.

“I think so,” said Mir, 15-5. “The advantage of the heavyweight division is there’s not as deep of a pool. That’s the nature of the business. At that point if I’m victorious (against Nogueira), that’s three wins in a row. I think I’ll be right back up there again.”

The remaining fights on the pay-per-view card include former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, welterweights Claude Patrick vs. Brian Ebersole and featherweights Mark Hominick vs. Chan Sung Jung.

Four preliminary fights will air live on Ion Television (7 p.m., Eastern) — light heavyweights Krzysztof Soszynski vs. Igor Pokrajac; middleweights Jared Hamman vs. Constantinos Philippou; lightweights John Makdessi vs. Dennis Hallman; and bantamweights Yves Jabouin vs. Walel Watson.

The remaining preliminaries (www.facebook.com/UFC, 5:45 p.m., Eastern) include: lightweight Mark Bocek vs. Nik Lentz; welterweight Rich Attonito vs. Jake Hecht; and lightweights Mitch Clarke vs. John Cholish.

 

Bellator Fighting Championships announced its sixth season debuts March 2, and will run on Fridays throughout the season.

“Our focus was to find the right night, where the largest number of MMA fans could enjoy the show,” Bellator chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney said. “We’ve been discussing this move with our partners at Viacom for months … we agreed that Fridays provided a great night for us to reach MMA fans with our live, real sport, tournament events every week.”

The tournaments include competition at featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight. A fifth division will be announced soon.

 

The British Association of Mixed Martial Arts presents its first card on HDNet on Saturday night. BAMMA 8, from Nottingham, England, will air live (4 p.m. Eastern).

Undefeated light heavyweight Jimi Manuwa, who recently signed a four-fight deal with the promotion, will debut versus Antony Rea in the main event. Welterweights Jim Wallhead and Joey Villasenor, lightweights Andre Winner and Diego Gonzalez and bantamweights Paul McVeigh and Erik Perez will also fight on the televised portion of the card.

Winner, the season nine runner-up on The Ultimate Fighter, spent two years with the UFC prior to his BAMMA debut in September. The fight versus Gonzalez will determine the top contender for the promotion’s lightweight title.

UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones is getting event better according to Jackson

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Jon Jones is getting event better according to Jackson ‘improving leaps and bounds’ – Jackson

ESPN staff
Jon Jones is preparing for his second UFC title defence © Getty Images

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Greg Jackson has sounded an ominous warning to Lyoto Machida ahead of his December title fight, claiming Jon Jones is making vast improvements to his already-sensational skill set.

Machida meets Jones at UFC 140 in December, attempting to succeed where both Mauricio Shogun Rua and Rampage Jackson have failed already this year. Jones is looking like a dominant light-heavyweight champion, and Machida starts as a big underdog.

Already in his short career Jones has displayed an outstanding, multi-faceted skill base, mixing spinning elbows with flying knees, judo throws with double-leg takedowns, and lacerating ground-and-pound with slick submissions.

Machida will need to figure out mixed martial arts’ Rubik’s cube, but Jackson insists Jones is adding new tools with every training session that he undertakes.

“Absolutely, he’s learning like crazy,” Jackson told Sherdog Radio Network’s Savage Dog Show. “There’s still a lot of stuff that he’s picking up constantly because he’s very young.

“He’s very good at what he’s doing right now, but he’s still very young in the game. No matter how good you are, there’s just an amount of knowledge that has to be passed and that takes a certain amount of time, even if you pick up everything right away.

“So he’s still improving leaps and bounds.”

Jackson is preparing another one of his fighters, Clay Guida, for a tough assignment against Ben Henderson in the lightweight division this weekend. In Jackson’s eyes, it is a meeting between two of the most underrated stars at 155lbs.

“Ben Henderson is a phenomenal, amazing fighter and one of the most underrated 155ers in the world right now,” Jackson said. “Nobody gives him his due, and they should because he’s very, very good.

“The great thing about Clay is, he gets counted out of every fight. Every fight I give almost this exact same interview. Everybody’s like, ‘Well, he’s tough, but …’ and then he wins and he wins and he wins and he wins.

“I hope we can do it again because he’s been on a great streak since he joined our camp. I hope that he can overcome Ben’s very, very technical talents and his physical talents. I hope we’ll be victorious.”

Rashad Evans continues to trash talk jon Jones, Why?

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Yes, Rashad Evans is still talking about Jon Jones.

That’s mostly a function of his being asked about the light heavyweight champion, though, and that was the case this past weekend. “Suga” was the featured fighter at the UFC 138 Fight Club Q&A in Birmingham, England, and fans wanted to know who would win if Jones fought Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva.

Rashad’s reply:

“Honestly, I think… I would say Anderson would win. I think he would catch Jon standing up because I think Jon does a lot of crazy stuff but, fundamentally, sometimes he does it just to do it. But I think Anderson has a reason, like Anderson, fundamentally and technically, is better in that respect and I think he would catch (Jones) doing something stupid. If the fight was to go a little bit longer and Jon used his wrestling then I think the fight may go to Jon. But for the most part, early on in the fight, Anderson would catch Jon trying to do something crazy.”

Silva’s speed, technique and pinpoint accuracy would be enough to defeat Jones’ superior size, length and unorthodox striking. That’s one way of looking at it.

Another is to say that “Bones” would stifle “The Spider” with a suffocating top game, much like Chael Sonnen did to the middleweight champ back at UFC 117. Of course, Sonnen went on to lose that fight via triangle choke.

This one would be a tough call, no question. Who do you Maniacs think wins?

Evans answered plenty more questions during his near hour long on stage session in front of fans, including more on his feud with Jones and fighters he wishes he could have fought before they retired from MMA.