Daydreaming

In the run-up to UFC 214, there’s been joy from a lot of fans, a savage happiness that we’re finally seeing the Real Jon Jones. Freed by his issues with coke and cialis, his DUI and his rivalry with Daniel Cormier, everyone can finally and shamelessly revel in the joy of watching perhaps the greatest talent in the UFC do his thing, unfettered by morality or confusion over who he’s trying to be.

I'm unsure. I’ve never felt like Jones is fake, exactly. It seems wrong to imagine that there’s some image which he would stand up like a cardboard cutout while The Real Jones skulked in the shadows behind it, snorting blow and sandblasting prostitutes. It feels more that in any given situation he casts around for some part of himself which he feels is the best, then dives down into it until it surrounds him. This looks and feels gratingly implausible to those on the outside, but I don't doubt that in these brief moments Jones genuinely feels as though he is what he says he is. He really wants to be a role model, he really wants to be seen as a good father, a good Christian. It's just that these things slide away once a new and more exciting option (coke, women, someone who needs to learn that Jones is better at fighting than him) appears.

What he does is not lying so much as it looks like an externalized daydreaming, calling up different versions of himself which he invests with an implausible sincerity; the weapons-grade version of the way a normal person might imagine a new career, or a kid might dream of being an astronaut. To think that the asshole is real and the rest of it is false seems lazy.

In his first brutally wearing fight with Cormier, he touched gloves in a sign of respect; and he gave a relieved smile at seeing the clock tick down when he knew he was ahead; and he looked up at the sky and thanked God between rounds; and he put one hand on Cormier’s head like a patronizing big brother; and he gave him the “suck it” sign. If fights are a revealing process, then there were a lot of familiar elements on display. Perhaps some were real, and some were fake.

Reconciliation

He has been acting weirdly in the run-up to UFC 214. This is unsurprising! He is a weird person. This time it all seems a little different, however. He looks to be flying around various options, unsure of what approach to use and what is the most appropriate mayfly fantasy for a given situation. He trolled DC with hairline jokes, but also plaintively asked that Cormier stopped making him look like a bad guy. He has occasionally delivered the kind of aspirational blurb which he used to, like when he's talked about how much he loves his family. Then again, he’s also talked about how he's going to party extra hard after the fight.

Best believe on July 30th I'm going to turn all the way up, i'm taking the party to a different country, somewhere where there's no TMZ — Jon Bones Jones (@JonnyBones) July 19, 2017

He has been sour to journalists, and his boss. He’s looked absolutely miserable more than once.

There's a reconciliation problem at work here. He's apparently happy to “just be me” now, drug use and partying and all, but I suspect there sort of isn't a Real Jon Jones...? in quite the same way that there is, say, a Real Daniel Cormier, who is as solidly present and clearly defined as an oak tree. I think it’s all proving to be surprisingly difficult for Jones. Being freed to be himself might have taken away fun, and secrecy, and even structure; something like a clandestine affair which steadily collapses when it’s revealed.

The obvious question is whether this actually matters very much in the context of Jones winning fights. Armchair psychology is a fun indulgence, but you should be very cautious about drawing lines between what happens in the cage, and what happens outside of it. The translation mechanisms between the two are strange: grief or chaos or fear can throw a fighter off track, or it can focus them, or turn a fight into a welcome escape route.

Jon Jones is overrated

That being said, Jones' mental state is a popular thing to tie to his ability. Here's one big story you’ve no doubt heard, for example: Jon Jones is so good that he fights everyone where they want to, because he can, because he wants to prove a point. He wrestled with Cormier and he kickboxed with Gustafsson because he was an invincible combat sports savant who was so far above his peers that he could show off.

This is just mythologizing. In truth the molten potential of his younger years has cooled into something more defined, and he has genuinely been a quite consistent fighter for some time, with defined strengths and weaknesses. To pretend otherwise is to overrate him quite badly.

Jones has prodigious physical and mental gifts. He is incredibly tough, adaptable and well-conditioned. These traits are applied within a basic style framework which has at least one major flaw. This isn't anything as simple as "striking" or "grappling" because he’s obviously exceptionally well-rounded, but this in itself is a trait which can occlude basic questions like: how do the areas of an approach link together? Can the fighter actively move from one phase to the other? Perhaps most importantly, can they access their strongest and best area?

So this is the truth of Jones the Fighter: Essentially, he is a good-not-great range kickboxer, a fairly typical awkward and rangy student of the Jackson-Wink school, and a truly phenomenal clinch fighter, but he has little way of actively linking the two.

To stress the point, let's take another example: Luke Rockhold. “What is this fighter best at?” is a question which most people could answer: Luke Rockhold is at his best when grappling from top position. The second question should then always be: “How does he get there?” and the answer with regards to Rockhold is that... he can't. His style is built around counter-wrestling rather than active phase-shifts or a strong chain wrestling approach. His times spent in top position in the UFC have almost exclusively come from countering takedowns or scrambles, or odd gifts like Weidman's wheel kick. The construction of Rockhold's approach only makes sense if you assume that he is the greatest striker in the middleweight division, that striking is his core competency and his greatest weapon by a huge degree. It is not, and so in his last fight Rockhold had a kickboxing match with a man that he physically and technically outclassed on multiple levels, and got knocked out.

Jon Jones is obviously at his best in the clinch. How does he get there? Jones' clinch entries are (for a fluid, creative athlete) surprisingly ugly. He doesn't have effective pressuring footwork, he isn't particularly skilled at throwing casting hooks into entries, he can't chain marching strikes into takedowns or a clinch like a Demetrious Johnson. When he enters he normally raises his arms, lowers his head and walks forwards like a zombie. This is not all that difficult to avoid.

We shouldn't just consider phases or even the connections between phases, but the way transitions function as logic gates. IF someone works their way past Jones' kicking and range game then he can clinch up with them, but this only works IF it is assumed that they actually want to get past the kicking and range layer.

If they instead stick around in that layer (Rashad Evans, OSP, Gustafsson) he will be forced into awkward kickboxing matches where he has to lean on his chin and workrate. If they press forward (Teixeira, Cormier). they are coming into an area where he is perhaps the best fighter in the UFC. But he doesn't fight people in their strongest areas because he wants to.

Frazier?

So, Jones is coming off a long lay-off, and looks to be acting strangely. We've established that he's not an invincible fighter who can only be defeated by his own caprice. Does this mean that Cormier is a good upset pick?

I think it’s unlikely, for a number of reasons, up to and including including their stature, Jones’ attritional approach, his youth, and his comparatively better striking defense. Mostly, it comes down to the fact that it Cormier is a short clinch fighter who has to engage Jones in his best phase. A lot of MMA coaches have been asked their opinions on the fight, and there is a common theme: as long as Jones' head is on straight, he probably wins it.

This seems right. Jones told Cormier that he was going to end up being the Frazier to Jones' Ali... but Frazier was a rough style match-up for Ali, and Cormier's style is frankly pretty poor for taking on Jones. In the end, the most significant thing he might have done may be effectively removing Jones’ worst style matchup from the sport entirely, by retiring Anthony Johnson.

Still, if Jones loses the fight, the mental factor shouldn’t be an excuse: on a purely stylistic level Cormier had little business being able to beat the men that he did on his title run, either. Gustafsson and Johnson were big, dynamic, powerful hitters with great takedown defense. It’s hard to say that Cormier beat them because he was technically or athletically superior. Instead, he broke them mentally, by simply refusing to go away. If he does that to Jones, he will have done it too many times for it to be a fluke.

Breaking Jones will be hard though. I wrote once about Jones, and heart, and a few other things, before his first fight with Cormier, and I think it still holds true:

There isn't a more contextually loaded concept in combat sports than the term "heart". A fighter who shows heart is one who gets up, who refuses to be beaten down. It implies goodness and love... but it's not where that drive comes from. It comes from a place of pure selfish egotism. A single-minded focus on winning at all costs. Ask any athlete if they push through tough spots visualizing their children, or their wives, or the kids at the orphanage, and they'll tell you that that idea is complete garbage. Or at least the honest ones will.

After I wrote that article, Jones ground out Cormier. Before it he had pulled his way out of Vitor Belfort’s armbar; had come back against Gustafsson; had slaughtered Sonnen on a horribly broken toe.

Whatever heart is, Jones has it in spades; whether there’s some real, pure and savage version of himself at his core, or whether each fight becomes a persona which he inhabits with 100% belief.

At the end of the day he still fights with a strange style which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but there’s almost no-one who can make him pay for it. Similarly, he may be a disaster outside of the cage, but inside it? He’s been unbreakable.