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Jon Jones: Israel Adesanya ‘would’ve got ground and pounded to death’ if we actually fought

December 04, 2021
Jon Jones
Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

Jon Jones has been told a lot of people would beat him during his career, but only a couple have actually come close, according to the judges scoring his fights.

While Jones has given many opponents credit for pushing him to the brink, the former UFC light heavyweight champion never saw Israel Adesanya giving him problems if they actually fought.

For the better part of two years, that was the superfight everyone was talking about, but after Adesanya fell to Jan Blachowicz in his attempt to become a two-division UFC champion, Jones saw everything he needed to see to know how that matchup would have gone for him.

“It’s been a really long time since I fought someone was such a low level of grappling,” Jones said during a late night Q&A session on Twitter. “He would’ve got ground and pounded to death.”

Grappling really did doom Adesanya’s chances of beating Blachowicz that night and then ironically the Polish powerhouse suffered a similar fate in his next fight when he fell to Glover Teixeira at UFC 267 in October.

That’s what led to Jones taking a sarcastic shot at him as well after it was suggested that he left the 205-pound division just as a real threat like Blachowicz rose to the top of the rankings.

“I was terrified of Jan according to Jan,” Jones wrote. “Had to wait him out. Strategy worked I guess.”

The impromptu social media session with Jones actually started as he posted a graphic that shows he has the most wins in title fights for anybody in UFC history.

As he plots his return at heavyweight in 2022, Jones is already expecting to add even more accolades to his already impressive resume.

“If God allows it, I’m going to set this bar so high that no man will ever touch it,” Jones said. “At least not in my lifetime.”

Of course that statement was met with some criticism because Jones has missed huge parts of the prime of his career due to issues both inside and outside the cage.

From a suspension tied to a doping violation to numerous arrests over the years, Jones has spent a lot of time out of the cage when he could have been competing and potentially putting himself in a position where no one could ever touch his records.

That said, Jones disagrees with the notion that he’s somehow soiled his legacy in terms of performances because he’s still widely considered the greatest mixed martial artist of all time despite those long stretches where he wasn’t able to compete.

“Nothing is a guarantee my guy,” Jones said. “Even with years of inactivity I’ve been able to achieve some pretty outstanding records that are still holding to this day. And the story is far from over, I got a lot more winning to do.”

Finally, Jones addressed his financial past and future with the UFC, which has arguably been the biggest deterrent to his return to action after he relinquished his light heavyweight title in 2020.

Jones has argued that he’s worth a lot more to the UFC than what the organization had been paying him lately, which is why he tried to negotiate for a much bigger purse when a fight against future heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou was proposed to him.

Jones and UFC president Dana White went back and forth through a series of interviews and social media posts and to date there’s no proof the two sides have actually worked out a new deal once the 34-year-old New York native is ready to fight again.

Still, Jones isn’t blaming White or the UFC for what he was being paid prior to now because he admits that he was ill equipped at that stage of his career to truly understand his worth.

“It’s really not robbery if you let someone do it,” Jones said about his pay with the UFC in the past. “I wasn’t equipped for the position I was in.”

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