If Jon Jones ever had a reason to shoot for a double leg the first chance he gets in the cage, it would be when Glover Teixeira is standing across from him at UFC 172 on April 26th in Baltimore Arena, Baltimore Maryland.
“I’m just going to tell you the short version,” Phil Davis said recently in an interview with MMAJunkie Radio. “Alexander Gustafsson put tips all over that boy. [Jones] doesn’t know up from down, left from right. So I really don’t see him wanting to get back in there with anybody—definitely not Alexander. I don’t even think he wants to get back in there with Glover Teixeira—bless his little heart.”
Obviously Jon Jones is the champ and will show up against Teixeira. But Davis may be on to something. Should Jon Jones show up? Or should he use the skill set he has to out point Teixeira and remain the UFC light heavyweight champion of the world, allowing little to no incident?
When Jones fought Chael Sonnen at UFC 169 back in April, he chose to play towards Sonnen’s strengths and neutralize his opponent in his own element on the ground. Like he said he “Chael Sonnen’d Chael Sonnen.”
In his last fight he was unable to Chael Sonnen Alexander Gustafsson and it almost cost him the fight when he was actually taken down himself for the first time in his career and wound up in a five round battle that saw him take more damage than all his previous fights combined.
That’s where all the hate comes from recently from Davis and why media outlets run with Davis’s brash statements as if they forebode a changing of the guard. Jones is still a brutal finisher and even though he was tested in his last fight, he willingly admitted he hadn’t focused enough on his wrestling in his last training camp.
But a choice remains in front of him nonetheless. Will he fight like Georges St Pierre did at the end of his career or will he stand tall and risk going out the way Anderson Silva did at UFC 162? Just YouTube Jon Jones at UFC 162 and you will see a man’s face (as Silva dropped in the second) who was considering his own legacy at the time.
jones is smart. Smart enough to know that everyone’s days are numbered as the champ and they don’t always end gracefully. Phil Davis might be riding high since defeating Lyoto Machida and being the last man to finish Gustafsson, of whom was Jones’s greatest challenge to date.
But these are all just well-crafted words to Jones. He’s finished everyone in the light heavyweight division. So with all the confidence and all the risk in his corner, what’s he going to do? Remember, he’s the most capable wrestler in the UFC at the moment and yet is the arbiter of unorthodox striking, especially since Anderson Silva has been sidelined.
If he can take Teixeira down, he wins, but if he stands with him and out strikes the heavy handed contender, he furthers his legacy while risking his championship run by one solid shot.
I believe he’s going to focus his gameplan off watching tape on Teixeira’s last fight against Ryan Bader. They both share experiences against this opponent, but the one thing they don’t have in common, is that Teixeira almost lost by TKO to the man.
He got caught while chasing Bader and it almost cost him his title aspirations. What Jones sees is a faster stronger version of Rampage Jackson. That’s only positive for the young champ, because it gives him a repertoire of options.
In the end, he’s going to stick and run, and when Teixeira gets worn down from eating elbows, straight punches and unorthodox kicks, he’s going to find himself struggling to make it through five.
Not to say Teixeira won’t find a chance to land a shot or two, but Jones won’t give him a clean look. If he wants to emulate Anderson Silva’s success in the cage, he’s gonna need to follow Chris Weidman’s strategy of mixing his wrestling with his strikes.
I know I’m making a crazy comparison between Weidman and Jones right now, but if Greg Jackson has anything to say about Jones’s game plan, his perspective will be focused on the philosophy he’s always seemed to incorporate in to his fighters and that is to keep their opponents guessing at all costs.
If Teixeira hesitates, he won’t land those hammers and that’s a fact. Whether Daniel Cormier, Alexander Gustafsson, Rashad Evans, or Phil Davis receives a shot against Jones in the future, the blue print is far from having been written, on how to beat the champ.