Jon Jones is considered the best fighter in the history of mixed martial arts and he says, unlike Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, the secret to his success is that he knows he can be beaten.
Speaking at a media event to promote the upcoming UFC 200 event which he will headline alongside current light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, Jones had harsh truths for McGregor and Rousey, both of whom lost their last fights in convincing circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhlG678tJJw
Jones, who was stripped of his light heavyweight title last year for events outside of the cage, says he sees McGregor and Rousey - the two biggest pay-per-view stars in the UFC - as examples of how buying too much into your own success can lead to failure.
He said:
I know I can be beat and I think that's why I haven't been beat, where some of these guys really start to believe their hype.
Jones and Cormier will headline the marquee UFC 200 event on July 9th, replacing Conor McGregor who fell foul of the company's extensive promotion requirements after his loss to Nate Diaz back in March. Ronda Rousey, at one time considerable as 'unbeatable' as anyone in the sport, suffered a definitive head-kick loss to Holly Holm back in November.
Before their respective defeats and the fallout which came after, both McGregor and Rousey were tipped to spearhead what will be the UFC's biggest ever event.
Their respective losses are very much Jones' gain and he says that it was overconfidence which led to McGregor and Rousey's downfall.
Ronda Rousey, they were saying she's the best fighter of all time and the best athlete in the world. stuff like that. And I was happy for her to realise those accolade, but once I realised she was starting to believe it herself, I knew she was in a dangerous spot.
As for McGregor, who so effortlessly ran through the featherweight division before deciding to move up in weight, Jones reserved a particularly strong wake-up call.
Conor McGregor saying these things about being the baddest dude and 'I'll beat anybody in any weight class,' that's foolish stuff. When you believe the hype to that level, then you're in danger.
Jones has just one one blemish in his 23 fight career thus far, a controversial DQ loss to Matt Hamill in a fight he was dominating back in 2009 but he says that, for a fighter who is ostensibly undefeated, it's the knowledge that he can be beaten which is his biggest motivator.
I talk about being confident in winning all the time, but the reason why I tend to always win is because at the end of the day I'm more nervous than any other fighter. It causes me to spend every night until 3 o'clock in the morning just on my laptop watching the same damn fight over and over again with a notebook, thinking about the ways I can lose, thinking about what I need to do. That's really what I attribute to being undefeated all these years, just how seriously I take it and how much I don't know.
There's a lot of guys who are on my team currently, a lot of guys on my team who aren't in the UFC who can beat me on any given day. I get taken down all the time in practice. I get hit pretty hard. I get tapped out all the time in practice.
To the fans and other fighters, they probably looks at me as being close to unbeatable. Wheareas you spend time [at his gym], you see that I'm definitely not a guy that wins every day.
The Jones and Cormier rematch at the summit of UFC 200 will be one of the most financially lucrative fights in UFC history and it's McGregor's squabbles with Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta which handed Jones the opportunity to reclaim his title.
While fans were disappointed at McGregor's removal from the card, Jones is only too happy to fill the gap - and the extra cash that comes with such a high profile spot.
Thanks for the cheese, he might say.
