In times like these, it’s tempting to grasp for analogies. Ali vs. Frazier. Tyson vs. Holyfield. Arnold vs. The Predator with a little bit of Robocop vs. That Other Robocop Who Couldn’t Walk Down Stairs.

That’s what it feels like heading into Saturday’s UFC 182 pay-per-view headliner and light heavyweight title fight between champion Jon Jones (20-1 MMA, 14-1 UFC) and challenger Daniel Cormier (15-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC). In other words, it feels big. It feels important, in a way that an MMA fight hasn’t felt important for a very long time.

It feels like the kind of fight where, if you were to accidentally cut your finger off while slicing avocados for your famous guacamole dip just as Bruce Buffer launched into his ritualistic screaming and jumping routine, you’d be tempted to stick that sucker in the freezer until after the fight. Because, come on, you’ve got nine more fingers. There might be only one Jones vs. Cormier.

But one of the (many) things that makes this fight feel so special is how unlike all the others it seems. You look around for an apt comparison, and you’re forced to realize that there just isn’t one. It’s not Ali-Frazier I, with its socio-political implications that divided a nation. It’s not The Rumble in Jungle or The Thrilla in Manilla. It’s not friends who became enemies or even enemies who each represented something larger than themselves. It’s just two fighters at the apex of their abilities, and two men who can’t stand to be anything but the best.

That’s the thing that jumps out at me whenever I hear any version of the Jones-Cormier beef origin story. Whether you believe it was Jones sneering at Cormier’s wrestling credentials or Cormier finding offense where none existed, it almost doesn’t matter. This was inevitable, as long as these two occupied the same sport at the same time. What it really comes down to is the trait they have in common, which is an obsessive desire to be on top, looking down at everyone else.

Are they nice guys? Sure they are, in their own ways. But as Larry Holmes once said about Muhammad Ali (since apparently we can’t avoid those comparisons when it comes to Jones), “He wanted to be here, with you down there. As long as you stay down there with him up here, you’re the greatest thing in the world to him.” That’s how it is with Jones and Cormier alike. Both nice guys, but with both of them it’s the kind of nice that’s only maintained as long as you know your place, which is somewhere firmly below them in the pecking order. Once there’s even the hint that you might think you’re on the same level or higher, the kindness gives way to a thorough and pitiless brutality.

With both those men walking around within spitting distance of 205 pounds, and with both of them sporting professional records that are unblemished by anything resembling a true defeat, you don’t have to be a fortune-teller to know that they’ll probably butt heads some day.

For all we (or they) know, they don’t even really dislike each other. What they dislike is the idea of each other, some other guy who would dare think he’s as good at fighting. What they dislike is that there might be someone else out there like themselves.

That’s what makes this more than just another one of those paint-by-numbers grudge matches that promoters love to inflate with every bit of hot air they can coax out of the participants. That, and the fact that the winner of this fight will have perhaps the best claim to the title of “baddest man on the planet.” Whatever other stories Jones and Cormier might be telling themselves about how this beef started or what it is that makes them the hero and the other guy the villain, the truth is probably not so complicated.

They both want to be the best. They both believe that they are the best. They’re both tortured by even the faintest suggestion that they might be wrong about that. Neither can think of any way to resolve this that doesn’t involve smashing the person who dared to ask them to question themselves.

On that, at least, they agree. It’s only everything else that they insist on fighting about.

For more on UFC 182, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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