Why Jon Jones is not the best in the world. (And why we need to stop calling him that)

With a purple belt in BJJ & 2 of his last 3 wins coming by submission

if it’s lifetime accomplishments mixed with how good you are right now, no, it’s not him. it’s gsp or silva.

if it’s how good are you this exact second, forget about anything you’ve accomplished, that’s different. but it’s also sort of hypotehtical – we won’t know for sure how jones does against fighters like evans, gustaffson, davis or henderson till he fights them.

i keep going back to penn v. edgar I and henderson v. shields. those were two fights i could see NO WAY the favourite was going to lose. and yet it happened both times. in hindsight we can say they were predictable, but literally NO ONE saw it coming at the time.

so for me, i’d like to see jones take on a few more challengers before we start ranking him with gsp or silva, the 1a and 1b of all time and right now.

as for jones having a bad attidude or being a dick, it doesn’t affect my opinion of him as a fighter.

crowning him the “best fighter ever” or whatever is a little premature, but I think a lot of that is due to the fact he’s coming off arguably the best 1 year run in MMA history. Sure, there are fighters that have accomplished more over the span of their careers, but as it stands right now, he’s undoubtedly top 3 p4p. And the guy’s only 24. Provided he stays healthy, he could have another 10 years to earn that best ever moniker.

Impressive wall of text

and this whole manner of thinking.

But the one thing I find incredibly amusing, is that the best in the world needs to be “humble.”

Here is a short list of the least humble athletes in history: Jim Brown, Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan, Wilt Chamberlin, Pele, etc., etc.

Not only is humility not even remotely necessary to be a great athlete, it might actually make it harder to reach the zenith of the true greats.

People who are great at something almost always know it. If they come off as being humble about it, it’s because they’re good at bullshitting you.

so in conclusion, I didn’t read anything else you wrote.

You’re no Michael Bisping.

Not a single fighter has been able to beat him. He lost because he threw illegal elbows.

When Vera was on his 3 fight losing skid, 2 were by decision…one of them was close, and the other was against a fighter who was juicing….the lone stoppage was in the first round, courtesy of Jon Jones.

Vladimir Matyushenko, he’s in no all-time great list. But he has a respectable 26-5 record and has won 5 of his last 6(guess who the loss was to). He is 1-1 with two of the men who beat him, one loss was at heavyweight, one was to prime Tito Ortiz, and the other was to Jon Jones. Jones took him out in under two minutes…faster than anyone else.

Ryan Bader was a perfect 12-0 before running into Jon Jones.

Shogun Rua was the light heavyweight champion who had avenged two of his four career losses heading into the Jones fight. Not only did Shogun lose, but he was absolutely dominated for 100% of the fight, even in losing efforts to Griffin and Henderson…Shogun had moments of success at one point in the fight or another. Jones absolutely dominated him, and was the first, and so far only, man to make Shogun tap to strikes and score a TKO victory.

Rampage Jackson was a resurging former champion who famously had a 1 million dollar training camp. He admitted himself after the fight that he had no excuses like with other losses, no injuries, nothing, Jon Jones was just that good.

Lyoto Machida was a former champion, 1-1 with one man who defeated him and lost a close split-decision to another. He pulled out all of the stops for his Jon Jones training camp, training in a smaller octagon, hiring a team of physical therapists and etc to maximize his training methods and routines, filming his sessions from 3 different camera angles, adding 20 pounds to his frame…etc etc. Jon Jones lost the first round, came back and choked Machida out in the 2nd.

These guys are coming in sharp against Jones…and he has finished 6 straight opponents. He is CLEARLY one of the best in the world…and very soon he might be the best.

But he isn’t right now.

Jon Jones is my favorite fighter and I disagree with the idea that he’s the best in the world or #1 pound for pound. I think only Snowden has said that though. However your justifications got REALLY weird.

I watched his previous fights and realized…the back elbow that hit Bonner was directly to the back of the head,

Do you think when Jon Jones was spinning that he was intentionally aiming for the back of Bonnar’s head? Sad to say that lots of people get hit in the back of the head in MMA. I don’t think you can call him a dirty fighter unless he does stuff like that on purpose.

If you have been following MMA at all you should know that when Shogun is injured, or it is his first fight coming off of a surgery, he is worthless.

Was this the same injured Shogun that just lost to Dan Henderson too? Do you think the same Shogun that showed up to that fight(he wasn’t coming off a knee injury remember) would beat Jon Jones? Considering how he has treated his other opponents is him blowing Shogun out an anomaly? Does Shogun saying he’s fine

Rampage, while I am a huge fan, I must admit he is rather one note. He is a boxer. He is old. In that fight I felt Jones looked like shit. He was running, taking one shot and moving out, couldn’t get a take down, and after the fight could barely walk. He got the win, but it wasn’t thrilling for me.

It is unimpressive that Jon won a kick boxing match against Rampage? Going into the fight everyone thought that if Jon couldn’t get Rampage down then he’d get KO’d by Rampage. Rampage completely lost the standing exchanges and when he got taken down he got mounted and cut open and then submitted.

The sequence that followed saw both fighters throw hard left hands, with Jones catching Machida a split-second earlier. It reminded me of Condit and Hardy. If the punch by Machida had landed first, we would be talking about a completely different outcome.

It wasn’t a case of them throwing punches at the same time. Jon Jones countered Machida. His corner told him that Lyoto is looking to counter his leg kicks with punches(that is how he landed that good shoot in the first). Jon threw a superman punch and Lyoto bit on the kick fake and then Jon landed straight down the pipe.

Since when does 2 title defenses make you the best in the world, if that was the case Cruz, Aldo, Edgar, GSP and Silva are all higher ranked than him because they have defended their belt more times.

The reason is because of his body of work. I disagree with putting him ahead of Anderson. I think he’s behind Edgar also. However the guy has been in the UFC for like 2 years and has barely been challenged. The dude got countered once and ate a shot and that is what is now equated to him getting dominated in a round. So that is why Jon has been getting so much more love than Cruz, Aldo(who hasn’t finished in the UFC), Edgar(who people think will lose his title soon), and GSP.

Take the lightweight division for example, the lightweight division has no shortage of contenders, and the ladder keeps shifting every fight, it is still not clear who gets the next shot, and it continues to be a confusing weight-class to analyze. All of the other weight-classes have multiple people fans can think of that could compete for the belt. Light heavyweight is not like that. For years the top contenders have stayed there, and there is a huge disparity between the top and the rest. The fact that Jon Jones has cleared out a division after a title fight and 2 defenses says more about the weakness of the division than the strength of Jones.

OMFG, I KNEW IT. I said it earlier this year that people were gonna do this. The discrediting of Jon Jones went like this:
“Remember Houston Alexander”
“Remember Sokodju”
“Remember Brandon Vera”
“Remember the Machida Era”

And I knew the next logical step would be, “Well LHW is a shallow division.” You know why LW looks much deeper than LHW now? Because there isn’t a dominant champion. For years in the LHW division all of the elite fighters were about the same level. Jon Jones is head and shoulders above them. Just like Anderson Silva is head and shoulders above MW. If Anderson wasn’t there then MW would look stacked with Chael, Maia, Bisping, Marquardt, and Munoz circling around in the elite group. Most of them have victories over the other and they are all fairly evenly matched.

If someone rose in LW and started beating the **** out of all the contenders then people would say the same thing about LW too. Jose Aldo and Dominick Cruz have had similar issues with their divisions. Remember how everyone thought that Kenny Florian would go down to FW and dominate everyone and beat Jose Aldo? Dude got dropped twice by Diego Nunez and lost decisively to Jose.

So anyway, you went completely off the rails and nothing you said really disproved that he isn’t the #1 fighter. It was just you showing that you don’t like the guy and you’re trying to find reasons to tear him down. You know why I don’t have him as the #1 in the world? His striking isn’t refined enough. Anderson and Frankie(who I have ahead of him P4P) are more complete because they don’t have a real hole in their game. They aren’t the best at everyone of course, but Jon is clearly a neophyte standing. His great wrestling allows him to get away with that, but in a “P4P fight” then I think Frankie and Anderson would have a great chance at beating him. I’m actually positive Frankie would. Frankie being able to hop in and out with crisp boxing and defensive wrestling would be an absolute nightmare for Bones.

Anderson Silva.

He has let damn near every fighter into his reach. Someone needs to teach him how to keep people at distance.

I thought he just finished 3 of the top 5 LHW’s in less than a year, seemingly with ease.

Just curious here, does he have pillowfists?

Seriously, I think that’s the only reason.