Jon Jones is one of the most talented fighters in UFC history. He broke so many records inside of the octagon that he will definitely will go down in history as one of the legend of the sport. His talent gave him advantage in many fights, and he did not seriously trained for many of these fights ( as he said it). He would drink and party just days before the fight and still dominate the fighters inside of the octagon – until he met with Gustafsson.
Everything looked so easy for Jon, in 2011, as a replacement for injured Rashad Evans, he dominated mma legend Shogun Rua and became youngest ever UFC champion. After that he beat some true legend of this sport: Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort…
Jon Jones became one of the biggest superstars of the sport, and true champion, a role model to look up.
But then we started to get know little bit more about his personality.
UFC 151 was canceled because of Jon Jones did not wanted to fight Chael Sonnen on 8 days notice and Dana White was pissed because of that.
Dana White was so pissed off on Jon, he booked him another fight against Lyoto Machida and said “i can tell you this right now, he ain’t turning down Machida fight…if i get a call today which says he does not want to fight Machida i will have another media conference and it wont be good”.
One week after Jon Jones said i feel like a peace of meat in interview for Ariel Helwani
Chael Sonnen, ofcourse, had something to say about this case:
After all of this drama, Jon Jones beats Machida and then Rashad Evans who was fired from Greg Jackson & Mike Winkeljohn gym because of Jon Jones. “JW” decided to corner young gym newcomer Jones, and not support long time member of the gym Rashad Evans. After that he dominated Chael Sonnen and then came fight with Gustafsson.
At this point Jon Jones, was looking as unbeatable. Except Vitor Belfort and his arm triangle on Jones, no one was even close to put a hard time for Jon Jones. Event that Belfort’s arm triangle was the only thing that Belfort did before he got dominated by Jones.
But Gustafsson exposed Jones in many different fields. Alexander was able to stop all Jons’s takedown attempts and the reach, biggest advantage of Jon in previous fight was set to zero by Alexander. His boxing, footwork was just too much for Jones. And by many MMA fans Alexander won first 3 rounds, because Jon could not find the right answer for Gustafsson. Without be able to go for takedowns and his ground game, being outboxed by Alexander – Jones was able to work only on leg kicks. And he tried couple spinning elbows but without success.
In a 4th round Jon was looking to the clock because he was aware that he is loosing his belt and soon after that he tried another spinning elbow but this time it hits Gustafsson directly in forehead. After that Alexander could not really recover and it was all Jones until the end of the fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uue_iAGyfv8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNKR65ZgT28
After that Jon did not wanted to fight Alexander again, he did not even wanted to say his name in the interviews. Looks like he would like to not get any media attention to the guy who gave him the worst beating in his career. Soon after that came saga with Daniel Cormier and all problems that Jones had outside of the cage and no one was talking about Gustafsson any more – but now he is back and look so determine to take that title and ” to beat unbeatable”! In one interview, Gustafsson said – “…Jon Jones fight is bigger than fighting for title for me” and now he is fighting against Jon Jones and the match is for the title.
https://youtu.be/1RpBO2Gwg1E?t=114