Watching video of Jon Jones speak to members of the media in Los Angeles last Tuesday, I was struck by a powerful moment of deja vu.

Jones (22-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC), looking calm and composed ahead of his rematch with light-heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier (17-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) in Saturday’s UFC 200 pay-per-view headliner, was asked about the potential for a third fight with his bitter rival if he should happen to lose the second.

Not surprisingly, Jones replied that he didn’t plan on losing to the man he’s already beaten once. He even managed to slip in the claim that he’s never lost a fight, which is technically untrue while being, come on, basically true. Then he said this:

“I am aware that I think ‘D.C.’ has a lot of pressure on him. After I win this second fight, he’s over. He’s really over. He’ll have a great job doing commentary work, but it will be a major blow to his legacy, and I think that’s a lot of pressure for him. … He’s in a position where, he loses this one, he never really was the champion. I think he knows that, so I’m excited to sit his ass down somewhere.”

If you’ve been following this sport for a while, this might sound familiar. It might also sound like a pretty astute assessment of the situation – and from a guy who’s enough of a student of the game to know how it usually goes.

When I heard this comment, I couldn’t help but remember UFC 124 in December 2010. That’s when then-UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre took on challenger Josh Koscheck for the second time in less than four years as part of a rivalry that was, at times, almost as heated as the one between Jones and Cormier.

Prior to that second meeting, with Koscheck (17-10 MMA, 15-10 UFC) needling him in classic Koscheck fashion at every opportunity, a visibly frustrated St-Pierre (23-2 MMA 19-2 UFC) laid out this eerily accurate vision of the future at a pre-fight press conference:

“If I win against Josh Koscheck, when I beat him, it’s going to be the end of it. It’s going to be two times that I beat him, and if he has the same mentality as me, Josh Koscheck (is) going to have to reconsider the career. Because if he wants to be the best, now he’s going to lose two times to me. Now it’s going to take a long time again before he goes for the title, or maybe never again. He’s going to have to climb up the ladder a long time. So I’m going to beat him Saturday night, and it’s going to be the end of it. I’m not going to talk about him for a long, long time, and I’m going to feel very happy.”

Of course, St-Pierre did beat Koscheck that Saturday night, jabbing him into a half-blind state early and dominating him for all five rounds en route to a unanimous-decision victory.

And “GSP” was right: That was the last UFC title shot Koscheck got. After his loss to St-Pierre, Koscheck won his next two but then dropped five in a row before exiting the UFC and subsequently signing with Bellator, for whom he has yet to fight.

That rematch with St-Pierre was a clear turning point in Koscheck’s career. As he sat there listening to St-Pierre predict his future, he didn’t realize that he had already reached the high point of his MMA career. It wasn’t going to get any better for Koscheck. It didn’t.

For Cormier, it’s a useful (though also extremely stressful) history lesson.

If he goes 0-2 against Jones, and if Jones decides to stay put and keep dominating the division rather than moving up to heavyweight, it could easily be the last title shot Cormier ever gets at 205 pounds.

Then he’d have to choose between moving back to heavyweight himself, where his friend and teammate Cain Velasquez is currently competing, or else hang around at light heavyweight and hope for someone else to “disqualify” themselves in a way that benefits him.

Or, a third option, he could retire altogether and focus on that “great job” Jones referenced, the one where he gets paid to talk rather than fight.

None of those choices are ideal once you’ve already set your sights on being the undisputed UFC light heavyweight champ. And for a guy who came to MMA only after his dreams of an Olympic medal went unfulfilled following two different attempts, it might feel like the same old heartbreak all over again. Just one more way for history to repeat itself.

When you start to think of it in those terms, suddenly just calling it a high-pressure fight for Cormier feels like a colossal understatement.

For more on UFC 200, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.