

Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty

During the summer of ridiculous superfight call-outs—one of the dumbest periods in the short history of MMA media—everyone and their mum was out challenging champions from higher weightclasses or other sports, safe in the knowledge that the fights would never happen and that they could get a ton of free publicity off of the back of it.

There were some hilarious ones going around—Georges St. Pierre would go up to middleweight, Jon Jones would go up to heavyweight, Ronda Rousey would fight Floyd Mayweather—but the one which the public seemed to latch onto was Anderson Silva versus Roy Jones Jr in a boxing match.

Jones has been past his sell by date for almost a decade at this point, but that fight would still be a painful mismatch. Silva has done nothing in the boxing world, and has made a career out of bringing competent boxing to MMA against guys who—compared with similarly popular professional boxers—are pretty shaky with their hands.

Introducing Mr. Jones

Aside from the vast gap in level of competition and training from a pure boxing perspective, Jones is just a horrific stylistic match up for Silva. Silva's game has always looked weakest when he is forced to lead, or is kept guessing with feints and double ups—as he was against Weidman. By chance or by design, in his first fight with Weidman he jumped the gun as he pulled his head back and was left with nowhere to go. It's not chance, its just the risk you take when you pull straight back from punches—something which Jones himself knows all too well.

Not only did Jones in his prime excel on the counter, he was one of the most effective offensive boxers in the game because of his unusual leads. This isn't a guy who plodded forward, one reaching jab and wild right hand at a time. This was a man who would smother his opponent's offensive options, jump in with a bizarre but well practiced lead like a left uppercut, then flurry with both hands. He was a master at doubling up (which messes terribly with the head of anyone trying to use a reactionary system of defence such as pulling the head straight back) and would rattle off a series of paradiddles against his opponents' guards just to land one good punch up the middle.



Knockdown punching on the pivot—pretty rare.

Most of all, though, Jones was a thinking man's boxer. So much is made of his incredible speed and reactions—which were far above the norm in a professional fighter—but Jones deliberately found weird ways of doing things just so that his offence was more effective. “Nobody leads with left hooks and left uppercuts, you say? I should get good at that.” “Right hand leads are sucker punches? What if I did them all the time? Would the jab become the sucker punch?”

It was a meeting of incredible talent and genuine fighting intelligence, which you just don't see all that often. And though there were common features, a different Jones turned up to every fight.

Take, for example. Jones' stance. Jones would carry his right hand well in front of his shoulder. Many coaches teach that your rear hand thumb should be able to touch your chin at all times that you aren't throwing it. Jones carried it way ahead of him for two reasons.

Firstly, it often obstructed the path of the jab with a minuscule motion into its path. The jab is always called the fastest punch, normally accompanied by the repetition of “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”. If you stick something in the middle of that line, however, the jab can't just continue. By using his right hand to obstruct and check, Jones took away his opponent's fastest weapon. If they wanted to exploit the fact that his hand was well forward of his jawline, they had to punch around, and that—for a guy as fast as Jones who had been training his whole life to expect that reaction—was a much slower motion and easy to pick up on.

Checking the opponen'ts lead hand, and dropping his own, Jones was free to jump in with left hooks and uppercuts while the opponent was left to work with just their rear hand.

The second reason was that it shortened the path of the right hand. Jones was famous for the right hand lead, but it was rarely the same kind of right hand that he threw when he wanted to hurt someone. With his right hand forward, Jones would look at his opponent's eyes or chest intently, get on the ball of his back foot and drive into the straight. We've spoken about this before, but shaving milliseconds off of techniques makes them far higher percentage. By starting with his right hand forward, his hips almost square.



Notice the advanced position of the right hand, and the turning of the back foot before moving, again to shorten the motion.



Jones would end combinations with his right straight and use it to angle off to his left side—fairly unusual.

When he wasn't using the right hand lead to swell his opponent's face up and score points, it served mainly as a set up for the left hook. Because of Jones' almost squared shoulders, his jab and his power hand were effectively changed over. He jabbed with his right hand lead and used his left hook as his power hand.

When he wanted to land with power with the right, he'd just jab to turn his hips back and load up a cracking overhand. He was great on straight lines, but you won't see the overhand used much more effectively in high level boxing than it was by Jones.

Playing with Expectations

That's the basics out of the way. But what made Jones so unique was his ability to change and exploit an opponent's expectations. He didn't jab often, for instance... except when he did. If you're desperately trying to teach sparring partners to lead with their right hand, and then you get in the ring expecting that, you might find yourself eating jabs and feeling that you had wasted your time trying to prepare for the right hand leads.



Trying to parry the jab? Oh dear, your right side is open. A basic, bread and butter boxing set up used to devastating effect by a guy known for the unorthodox.

Jones fought heavy on his lead leg, leaning forward at the waist, presenting a false distance. Carrying his head well forward of his centre of gravity, it was easy for Jones to convince opponents that he was closer than he actually was. As soon as they jumped at him with a punch, Jones would pull his head back into a neutral position, over hips, and was ready to start power punching at an opponent who was recovering from a badly missed swing!



Rear hand parries against southpaw jabs? Insanity, but something Jones did frequently.

When did Jones jab the most? Against southpaws—where the jab is supposed to be the least effective. In fact, much of Jones' best work came in fights against southpaws. We spoke, after T.J. Dillashaw Killed the King, about the Japanese myth of sankaku-tobi, the triangle leap, or jumping around to the opponent's back. Outside of the crazy wire work in kung fu flicks, Jones was one of the few fighters who could use this kind of movement effectively.

But what Jones did so well was work out individual opponents. Jones fought a lot of fighters who frankly shouldn't have been in the ring with him. That's boxing, there's a ton of record padding en route to any good fight, but the real treat was seeing Jones in against someone who would challenge him.

The first loss of Jones' professional career came against Montel Griffin. Griffin was crafty and had been catching Jones with counter left hooks, or walk Jones into corners and focus on Jones' body. When Jones hurt Griffin, he went all out for the stoppage, but hit Griffin twice while the latter was quite blatantly on one knee and the bout was rightly ruled a DQ. In the rematch, Jones' got straight in Griffin's face with a 1-2, then paused, before cracking Griffin with a left hook as Griffin threw the counter hook which had caused Jones so much trouble in the first fight.

From that moment on, Griffin was cautious to counter—he had gotten nailed the last time he tried. Jones started opening up with left hooks and right hands to the head—always getting his forearms high, ready to catch-and-pitch if the hook came back. Griffin went to reposition himself, strutting backward to the centre of the ring, and Jones leapt on him, looking low and coming up with a left uppercut.

Another instance of Jones sussing a fighter out was against arguably the biggest challenge of his career—James Toney. Toney was something to behold at Super Middleweight, before he ate himself up to heavyweight. Coming in at 44-0-2, nobody really knew how to deal with him.

Jones had Toney chasing him around the ring all night, jumping in with left hooks to the sternum, then running off to Toney's left side. Toney was one of the finest counter fighters in the game, but had too much bravado to stick to it when Jones challenged him. Toney, like Jack Johnson before him, was a one hundred percent better fighter on the counter, but it was Jones who had him chasing all night. Furthermore, Jones was throwing peculiar shots to alleviate the danger of Toney's great shoulder roll to right hand—such as throwing full combinations, jab-right straight-left hook, to the solar plexus, and right hooks to the kidney.

Here Jones leaps in with a left hook, uses his left forearm to bump Toney's guard, then lands a left uppercut up the middle and flurries.

Perhaps the best remembered moment of the fight sums up the clash of egos. Supposedly inspired by his fighting cocks, Jones taunted Toney, exposing himself to attack. Toney, rightly, didn't fall for it, and as Jones went back into his stance, Toney performed the same taunt. Jones leapt on him with a left hook and floored Toney to take that round 10-8. He wasn't going to knock Toney out, but he certainly had Toney's number.

One of Jones' greatest accomplishments was winning one of the many versions of the world heavyweight title from John 'The Quiet Man' Ruiz. Ruiz was pushed like no-one's business by Don King because he was the first Mexican to win a heavyweight title, but he was a tedious fighter to watch. You can be a bland personality or a boring fighter, fans won't settle for both—and Ruiz quickly picked up the alternate nickname, 'The Boring Man'.

Ruiz would punch once, hold, break, and then go back to holding. Jones knew he had to keep Ruiz out in the open to stop the heavier man leaning on him, butting him and generally tiring him out and roughing him up.

Jones used his infamous windmill right hand, along with other tricks, to get Ruiz hesitating on the outside and prevent him from running into the clinch. Circling his right hand around in a dramatic style, Jones would play with tempo—suddenly springing forth with a right hand lead or a jab which made Ruiz wince.

Each time Ruiz worked Jones to the ropes, the referee would break them and Ruiz would close in to go to work along the ropes, but Jones would be gone. How did Jones accomplish this magic trick? With the help of the third man in the ring. Each time the referee broke them, Jones would walk around the referee's back and restart the action on the other side.

The referee has the right to stop a fighter doing this, and restart them against the ropes, but this is what separates a good ref from a weak ref. If a fighter like Jones sees he can get away with this, he'll do it all night. It saved him from being leaned on for extended periods and allowed him to keep the action in the centre of the ring, piling up the points, and there was nothing Ruiz could do to stop it.

Now, the wheels fell off the Jones wagon some time back. His chin is pretty shot, he isn't as fast as he used to be, and he doesn't really power punch anymore. But ask yourself—if of over 40 can do this to a professional, full time boxer like Jeff Lacey, does anyone in MMA really have the boxing skill to compete with him?

Of course, I just used the Jones – Silva match up was just as a framing device for an excuse to introduce some of Jones' skills in this article. Mixed Martial Arts and boxing are different sports—there are common elements, but anyone still playing the two off against each other in anything but jest is wasting their time, and everyone else's. Donatello would mop the floor with Van Gogh in a sculpting competition—by merit of the fact that Van Gogh didn't do much sculpting. Does that make Donatello the better artist?

Really, the idea of these superfights only interest people who insist that they only follow one or other of the two sports. A real fight fan should be following the men at the pinnacle of both crafts, recognizing the common areas, and appreciating both. Any MMA fighter or fan could learn a ton from Jones, and if he beat James Toney with strategies learned from watching fighting cocks, I'm sure he's more than willing to take ideas from a guy like Anderson Silva.

Pick up Jack Slack's new ebook, Fighting Karate at his blog Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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