Jon Jones V
The UFC light heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier is no longer a victory for Jones.
As he prepares for his return to the Octagon, the UFC star says he's fighting for much more than a title For most of the afternoon, he has been jovial, laughing with sparring partners between flurries of punches and lashes of whip-like kicks. But now, perhaps aware of his surroundings – and his legacy – Jones' voice quivers as he talks about the lowest point of his life, when he was living in a haze of alcohol and marijuana that led to a hit-and-run accident last year. That accident, he says, changed his life forever; it made him want to get clean and give up the fame and the fortune he had amassed.
It would not be the last time he had thoughts like this. 'I wanted to retire. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go away. I wanted to move to Mexico. I wanted to erase my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook so no one would be able to see me,' he says. 'I wanted to never do an interview again.
I wanted my fans to think, 'What ever happened to Jon Jones?' I wanted to disappear from celebrity life all together.' It's an important day for Jones.
He just completed his 72nd and final court-mandated public-speaking appearance, meaning he can completely focus on his next fight. Once upon a time, his opponent was UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier, but after a recent injury, it's middling contender Ovince Saint Preux instead. Cormier, however, is Jones' biggest rival. And more important, he holds the belt Jones never lost in the Octagon. Jones was stripped of the Light Heavyweight title after that hit-and-run accident last April, which earned him and the six-dozen speaking appearances he'd finished about an hour ago. But no jail time. Asked about the morning of April 26, Jones says he doesn't remember how or why he ran the red light; he says his brain 'took a time-out from reality' and that he can't recall the moment his SUV made contact with another car in the three-vehicle accident.
He only remembers panicking – overcome by the sudden thought that he could lose everything in the blink of an eye. Turns out, that's what happened. He was stripped of the title he'd held for four years, suspended indefinitely from the UFC and watched his most prominent sponsor, Reebok – along with several others – walk away. In his mind it was all a blessing in disguise, a wake-up call that forced him to shape up and recognize his potential as perhaps the greatest fighter to ever live. But was it really? The Nevada Athletic Commission, which had jurisdiction over the Cormier fight, of Jones' pre-fight drug test.
Results showing he'd. The information should have been kept private by the agency, but after it surfaced, there was no going back. Jones got off with just a reprimand and a fine, but the incident could be viewed as a precursors of what was to come. Four weeks prior to a scheduled title defense against Anthony Johnson at UFC 187 in May, Jones had been out partying – a common occurrence during his training camps – and ended up staying at a friend's house.
While he was driving home the following morning, he ran a red light at an intersection and collided with another vehicle, driven by a pregnant woman, who suffered a broken arm. Instead of waiting for police to arrive, Jones fled the scene on foot, such a pipe filled with marijuana, clothes and condoms. According to eyewitnesses, he did, however, from his car before running off again. More than 24 hours later, and was charged with leaving the scene of a crime – a felony.
UFC had no choice but to pull Jones from his upcoming fight, suspend him indefinitely and. And just like, that everything he'd worked so hard for was gone. 'It was a reality check,' he says. 'That's really what it all boils down to for me. It was the day that I realized that life wasn't all fun and games, there are consequences for your actions.'
Jon Jones at Jackson-Wink MMA. Photograph by Jen Judge Jones is as close to an unstoppable fighter as the mixed martial arts world has ever seen. Not only is his pound-for-pound supremacy assumed by most, if not all, in the sport, his claim to 'greatest of all time' isn't particularly controversial.
So far in his nearly eight-year career, his toughest opponent has been himself. Jones has won 21 of his 22 career contests. His lone defeat came via a for accidentally striking opponent Matt Hamill with while in the midst of bashing him to an otherwise-imminent stoppage.
Jones is essentially unbeaten and had manhandled eight straight challengers before his belt was taken away. What's more, he did most of it in an altered state. Jones admits he trained only when necessary, drank alcohol excessively and smoked marijuana constantly before his fights.
Because he could bend the rules and still achieve magnificent results. 'Pretty much my whole career I wasn't living like a champ.
Fighters that look up to me would go out with me on weekends and see me get blackout wasted, weeks before a fight,' he confesses. 'Then they think, 'Jon Jones can do it. Maybe I can.' 'It would be like Kobe Bryant taking a rookie out and getting blackout drunk the night before a game, then going out there and dropping 30 points the next day,' he continues. 'That would lead somebody down the wrong path of thinking. That was the same thing I was doing.'
Jones grew up in an underprivileged home in upstate New York, struggled in school and, though he was a successful high school wrestler, lived in the shadow of his two brothers, both standout athletes on their way to NFL prominence. So when success came so quickly through professional fighting, he was shocked. 'I really started to get money, started to be able to afford to go out, to have a good time and buy people drinks,' he says. 'Growing up, I was poor. In college I was poor. I never had anything.
Then I go from living in a basement to renting out a house. My life just started to change so fast.' It was a whirlwind for Jones. He dropped out of college, had his first fight at age 20, and astonishingly, less than four months later, signed a UFC contract.
After just two-and-a-half years and seven fights with the promotion, Jones got his first shot at a title – against Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua at UFC 128 in March 2011., and made history as the youngest fighter to capture a UFC belt, a record that still stands. He was on top of the world. 'I was never popular. I always kind of wanted to be accepted with the rich kids, with the cool kids, and I never had that,' he says. 'I became popular for the first time in my life, and I became obsessed with it. I loved being able to go to the bar and buy everyone a shot, make people happy, make people like me, and I became obsessed with that way of living. 'I thought I had friends.
I thought I was cool for the first time in my life.' With each successful title defense, Jones' profile only continued to rise. And so did his penchant for partying. He says his preparation suffered, but his performance inside the Octagon most certainly did not. His lengthy 6-foot-4 frame and terrifying 84.5-inch reach allowed him to ravage opponents almost effortlessly, meaning his lifestyle had very few consequences.
Jon Jones takes down Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua at UFC 128. Al Bello/Zuffa LLC/Getty 'Some camps I had a harder time quitting smoking and quitting drinking than others,' he says. 'I would occasionally get pretty fucked up in the middle of a training camp, because sometimes it's hard to quit cold turkey. There are a lot of camps where I didn't get caught with dirty marijuana tests. There was never really a concern of like, 'What if I get caught?'
You were just able to get away with it, so it became a huge part of me.' Jones' victory over Gustafsson broke Tito Ortiz's longstanding record for most consecutive 205-pound title defenses. UFC belts are not easily defended, and as Jones can attest, the longer a reign lasts, the more the pressure mounts. He found relief – and release – in marijuana.
'I've been slowly self-destructing,' he says. 'Self-medicating myself, smoking pot all day. Most people don't look at pot as a problem. 'Oh, it's just pot. It's going to be legal soon.
How can you be a pot addict?' The truth is, you can be a pot addict. If that's what you do when you wake up, before you play video games, before you train, before you study footage, before you go to sleep, you're smoking weed all day long. 'I had a problem self-medicating myself and not dealing with real emotions. I got in the limelight at a young age. At age 19, people were already comparing me to Anderson Silva.
I had two brothers that were destined to be in the NFL. I knew I never wanted to be the brother that wasn't a pro athlete,' he continues. 'There's pressure to be one of the successful brothers and not the one that didn't make it. I always put pressure on myself. I think somewhere along the line my relationship with marijuana just got stronger and stronger, and it was something I depended on and leaned on.' Jon Jones with the tools of his trade at Jackson-Wink.
Photograph by Jen Judge. Jones decided to take his advice. 'It lit a fire under my ass and really made me think about the fact that I was pissing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,' he says. Mcafee virusscan usb crack.
'I'm sitting here living this life, being in the argument of being the greatest of all-time in the sport, and I'm pissing it away making poor decisions, partying, taking my life for granted.' This past September, Jones appeared before a New Mexico judge to answer to the hit-and-run charge. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to 18 months of probation and the 72 youth speaking engagements. Jones thought if he was going to shake his compulsive habits and get clean, he needed a new, parallel focus to MMA. That's when he found powerlifting. Jones' sudden love of the sport came with an unexpected benefit: His previous party allies quickly disappeared from his life.
'Being on probation, I can't go to the club, so a lot of my 'friends,' they were dudes looking to get free drinks every weekend, free joints, free bong hits,' he says. 'My phone used to go crazy on Friday nights when I was able to go to the club and able to smoke weed.
Now that I'm sober, people realize, 'Oh you can't come out?' My phone calls went down by about half. 'It didn't make me sad; it made me glad,' he adds, after a pause. 'I realized, 'Shit, I don't have many friends.' ' On top of his new powerlifting routine, Jones brought in separate grappling and conditioning coaches to his team for the first time. He hired a nutritionist to cook meals and help him cut weight. He's finally doing the things elite fighters on his level should be doing.
Considering his previous dominance, it's a frightening thought that Jones may just now be tapping into his true potential. He also says he's working hard to emerge as a team leader at Jackson-Wink MMA, trying to set the example he should have all along. 'I'm not officially team captain, but to a lot of guys in here, I'm their captain. They see me doing the right things and working my ass off,' he says. 'A lot of the guys used to see me and envy the fact I could party and still win.
Daniel Cormier
I knew the guys who had a little hate in their blood, like, 'This motherfucker got everything I want as a fighter, and he's coming to practice high and shit.' Those guys now, they got nothing to say. It's not that they hated me; they hated what I got away with.'
You have reached a degraded version of ESPN.com because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer. For a complete ESPN.com experience, please upgrade or use a ESPN.com 200d Is Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier an all-time great rivalry? There's no secret about it - Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier do not like each other. Their battle in the cage has been just as fierce outside of it. And there's nothing better than bad blood between two fighters.
When Jones and Cormier meet in the Octagon for their light heavyweight title fight at UFC 214 on Saturday, it'll mark the second meeting of one of the fiercest rivalries the sport has ever known. What other matchups are most memorable? We posed this question to ESPN MMA writer Brett Okamoto, UFC lightweight fighter Gilbert Melendez and SportsCenter host Phil Murphy for their three favorite rivalries.
Chandler Jones
Brett Okamoto, MMA Insider Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans Of course, the reason we're talking about rivalries this week is Jones vs. Cormier - but honestly, that's only my second favorite rivalry that involves Jones. When it comes to the basis of a rivalry, there are few better storylines, to me, than friends turned enemies. Grudge matches happen every day, but it's very rare we see former friends and teammates turn on one another. This fight fractured one of the top camps in the world, forced people to choose sides and sent Evans, a former champion, across the country to form his own camp.
That is what you call a rivalry. Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen You want to talk a perfect storm.
Take the world's most perfect fighter and match him against the world's most perfect trash-talker. Those were the ingredients. After years of Silva facing nothing but respectful (and seemingly intimidated) opponents, the Brazilian legend ran into a self-proclaimed 'gangster' from West Linn, Oregon, who was not impressed by him at all.
Some rivalries are about bad blood, others about what happens in the cage. This one had both because of what happened in their first meeting. That was one of the most memorable fights I've ever covered. Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz Another friends-turned-enemies story.
And obviously, this one goes down as one of the most significant rivalries in UFC history. They just can't be friends when it comes to competition and championship money. If these two hadn't been the same size, maybe they would have been lifelong training partners - who knows? You add Dana White's part in it all, his problems with Ortiz, and it reads like a movie script. And the two nights they met were great. Classic Liddell performances, Ortiz's heart in the rematch, the fact they were both at the top of the sport when it all happened.
It divided the sport's fan base. How can you not love it? Gilbert Melendez, UFC lightweight Ronda Rousey vs.
Miesha Tate Even after Ronda Rousey dislocated the elbow of Miesha Tate in their first bout, she still had a strong dislike for her opponent. Both ladies became coaches on 'The Ultimate Fighter' series in which the rivalry escalated to another level. The two battled it out in a rematch and Rousey won via arm bar. Tate reached her hand out after the fight for a handshake, but Ronda turned her back and denied it.
This rivalry was real, and I must say it was even a little fun watching the outrageous back-and-forth feuding between not only the two ladies but between their camps as well. The rivalry was a success - both ladies delivered in the Octagon and their story really contributed to the growth of the women's MMA. Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor Everyone wanted a piece of Conor at the time, but Nate got the call on short notice after a week of hanging in Cabo for vacation. I know this because I was with him. After the announcement, the next three weeks featured both fighters going toe-to-toe in mental warfare. Nate had the mental edge come fight night when he broke Conor and submitted the Irish star in the second round.
The performance was impressive considering he was just on vacation and took the matchup on short notice. We all knew there would be a rematch inside the Octagon, but the press tour was also must-watch. Both delivered.
Nobody can forget the bottles and cans that flew around at the presser, and I was there to see it all. It ended in chaos after tempers flared when Nate walked out midway through, cursing at Conor. That was the promotion to one of the best fights I've ever seen. The second fight between them was an entertaining back-and-forth battle between two gladiators who seemed unfinished at the end of it all. Conor got the win, but so did the fans. What makes this rivalry so special is that it was the first time I've seen such a battle in the mental warfare department by both men.
And of course this story isn't over. It's 1-1 on paper, and we all hope to see the tiebreaker. Wanderlei Silva vs. Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson This rivalry started when a hyped-up Rampage Jackson - who just wrecked Kevin Randleman - took the middle of the ring, looked down at Wanderlei, who was sitting in the front row, and said some harsh words, calling out the former Pride champion. Furious, Wanderlei rushed to the ring, got in Jackson's face and shoved him. A brawl nearly broke out and it took the whole Pride staff to keep these beasts separated.
It was barbarous and I loved it. This was the first time I witnessed two top-level fighters ready to scrap anytime, anyplace - and for free. Three fights happened between them and all ended in knockouts. Each fight was entertaining, but what was most memorable was how brutal each one of these fights ended. In their first matchup, Rampage was ahead thanks to a takedown and some ground-and-pound, but Wanderlei came back. He put Rampage in a Thai clinch and landed several vicious knees to Rampage's head.
Silva threw one more soccer kick to the grounded Rampage and the ref jumped in and saved him. The second fight ended the same way - Wanderlei with the Thai clinch to the knees, but this time Rampage was knocked out completely and fell through the ropes. It was a jaw-dropping sight. Rampage received his vengeance in the third fight by landing a powerful left hook that put Silva to sleep. What these men left out there for us fans should never be forgotten. Honorable mention: Me and Josh Thomson I have to mention my own personal rivalry since we are on the subject: Josh 'The Punk' Thomson.
Josh and I were considered the two best 155-pound fighters in Northern California and the two best lightweights in Strikeforce. He represents the city of San Jose and his team, the American Kickboxing Academy. I represent San Francisco and team GracieFighter. This was bigger than just any fight because it wasn't just about me. It was also about my team and my city. When we fought the first time, I lost every round. Josh went home the new Strikeforce champ, the baddest lightweight in the promotion, and now held the crown as Bay Area's best lightweight.
I got the rematch, but two weeks before the fight he pulled out due to injury. We had another fight scheduled, but he got hurt again. I was upset but just kept on training and winning. I was even crowned the Strikeforce interim champ while I waited for Josh. When the second fight finally came, it ended up being one of the most memorable fights of my career. We battled and put on an entertaining show, and the fans were on their feet cheering by the end of it. It was truly a 'Battle of the Bay' type of event.
I won and was crowned the Strikeforce champ for a second time, but most importantly I represented for my team, city and family. We fought a third time and I won a close one by split decision. In the end I had three wars with this man, and as much as I disliked him at the time, I have to say I truly respect him for his fighting skills, fighting spirit and for bringing the best out of me. Phil Murphy, SportsCenter host and MMA contributor Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Hughes They are not just the clear-cut best welterweights ever, but two of the better pound-for-pound fighters in UFC history.
GSP and Hughes met three times, each was for a belt, and all three finished inside two full rounds. Hughes had won 18 of 19 fights leading to his first of two losses to GSP; the Canadian still holds an otherworldly 25-2 record, with one of those blemishes to Hughes. These were all-time greats in the thick of their primes, meeting three times in three years, as MMA popularity was readying to gain mainstream acceptance. Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber Their title-fight trilogy spanned almost a decade, but these two failed to see eye-to-eye from the start.
Cruz famously wrote over Faber's face at the WEC 26 promotional poster signing. Faber won that bout, but Cruz claimed decisions at UFC 132 and UFC 199. They're career-long foils with contrasting personalities and legitimate animosity, but shared California roots (Faber from Northern California, Cruz from Southern California). They bridged the WEC-UFC gap, and it was hard to have bantamweight - or prior to that, featherweight - conversations without their inclusion for 10 years. Chuck Liddell vs.
Randy Couture The Iceman and The Natural completed their trilogy in only two years, eight months. Each fight was for the UFC light heavyweight title, and each ended in a knockout.
After dropping the first meeting, Liddell's redemption and subsequent rubber-match win started a run that made him the most dominant 205-pound fighter in history not named 'Jon Jones.' Liddell and Couture are two of the first six men inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. While it wasn't terribly contentious, it's hard to find a trilogy with better in-Octagon credentials than this.
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