Why UFC star Jon Jones doesn’t mind ‘villain’ role
LAS VEGAS – It was late September 2010 when the telephone rang. Jon Jones, then the hottest of all hot prospects in mixed martial arts, and his manager, Malki Kawa, were on the other end of the line.
It was, to be sure, a wholly unexpected and unusual call.
Jones was looking to be interviewed. There was a sweet naiveté about him at that point. It wouldn't be long before he wasn't so enthralled by the media, about being asked questions, about having reporters listen to his words and then draw a conclusion about the type of person he was.
But then, it was all new and fresh, and Jones enjoyed the attention.
There was no real purpose to a Jones interview that day. He had no fight coming up. He wasn't in the news for anything. Still, it was clear he was a star in the making and that fact alone was enough to make the interview happen.
Jones suggested a meeting in the food court of the Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas.
The soon-to-be champion gobbled down his fast food as he talked excitedly about his hopes and aspirations. At the time, Anderson Silva was not only the UFC's middleweight champion, but widely regarded as the greatest fighter in the world. It was clear even at that point, though, that Jones would some day be in the conversation.
What was also clear was that a Silva-Jones fight could one day become a major event in the UFC. Asked about it, Jones beamed and spoke excitedly.
He would love to fight Silva, he said. It would be the culmination of a dream.
For several minutes he went on about how great it would be if he ever had that opportunity.
It was clear he worshipped Silva and had great respect for the Brazilian legend.
Jones, though, feared his words could be misconstrued. He didn't want to come off as arrogant, he said. He didn't want anyone to think he was calling out Silva or that he perceived himself to be on Silva's level.
A day or two later, he called again and requested the story be read to him before it was published to ensure it accurately reported his words. Told that couldn't be done but assured it would be accurate, Jones finally let it drop.
It was with great relief when he finally saw the piece.
It's long been clear that Jones was concerned about his image. He was barely 23 then and new to big-time sports. But he was wise enough to want to control the message and to maintain a clean image.
Four years later, he's the UFC's light heavyweight champion and, unquestionably, the best fighter in the world. He might be the best mixed martial arts fighter who ever lived.
He faces one of his most significant challenges on Saturday when he meets the unbeaten Daniel Cormier in the main event of UFC 182 at the MGM Grand Garden.
But it is a very different Jones who will enter the cage on Saturday.
He's now a grizzled veteran of 27 who has gone 8-0 in UFC title fights, with only one fight being close at all. He's battled fiercely with UFC president Dana White and held his ground when White insisted he accept a new opponent on short notice at UFC 151.
No one defied White like Jones did that day. Jones' refusal to fight Chael Sonnen instead of Dan Henderson on about a week's notice led to the cancelation of the event, the first time in Zuffa history an event had to be canceled.
He also developed a strained relationship with both the media and large portions of the fan base.
As he prepares to fight the bout of his life, he's inundated with questions about being the UFC's most hated man.
He's going into the fight with Cormier as the bad guy, whether he likes it or not, and he's finally accepting of it.
It's not that he is eager to embrace it, except that, well, sometimes he is.
He's become known over the last year or two for his taunting posts on social media, which he posts and then after a brief time once a controversy erupts, deletes. After his last fight, when fans were upset about his eye pokes against Glover Teixeira, he posted a video making light of it.
Why, he was asked, would he seem to go out of his way to antagonize the fan base when he seems to so desperately want love and acceptance.
"I don't know why I do that," he said. "I am aware that mattering counts. Sometimes I do it just to be an entertainer."
Cormier has spent much of the year referring to Jones as "fake" and a phony, and said he believes fans find it hard to relate to Jones.
He's not one of them, Cormier said, and so people have a hard time warming up to him.
Jones has subtly and, at times, not too subtly, mocked Cormier's physical appearance. In a conference call, he said Cormier's body "doesn't scream athlete."
Multiple times during an interview with Yahoo Sports, when asked about tactics in the fight, he referred to Cormier as short. The 6-foot-4-inch Jones said it in an almost dismissive matter.
Cormier was a two-time U.S. Olympian and the captain of the 2008 Olympic freestyle wrestling team in Beijing. But he's five or six inches shorter than Jones and has a much stockier build.
"A lot of times, we connect to people we see who we can kind of relate to," Cormier said. "And not only from the standpoint of just physical appearance. It's how we are with people. When I'm out and about, you won't see me wearing a $20,000 watch. You won't see me driving a $150,000 car.
"It's a different approach to the way I go about my business. More than anything, I think they relate to me more than they do with Jon. I mean, I have a chipped tooth, a tooth that is out in the front, and I go on TV with it. It's more of a blue-collar, I'm-here-to-work approach that maybe makes people relate to me more."
But not even Jones' harshest critic would dare suggest he doesn't work hard. He's always in magnificent shape, and when the fight was up for grabs in the waning moments of a bout with Alexander Gustafsson in 2013, Jones was the one who stepped on the accelerator as the clocked wound down to secure the victory.
Jones doesn't have the wrestling background that Cormier does – few do – and that's led to a widespread belief that Cormier will give Jones problems the champion has never faced before.
But Jones scoffs at that notion, and said just because no one has been able to put him down and keep him down, it doesn't mean he doesn't have a lot of game from the bottom.
He admits he'd love to win with a submission from the bottom to show the part of the game he says is strong but that few have seen.
He admires Silva for the way Silva recovered at UFC 117 against Chael Sonnen. Sonnen was a huge underdog, but his wrestling kept Silva on his back for most of the fight. In the waning moments of the fifth round of a fight Sonnen was destined to win, Silva caught him with a dramatic triangle choke to earn the submission and keep his belt.
"I can never imagine having a match like that [where I take a lot of punishment over a long period of time], but I'll tell you what, there is a part of me that is excited about possibly being taken down to show what I can do off my back," Jones said. "If you watch my fights, and you look with your own two eyes and just look at facts and see for yourself with your own eyes, you won't see any bad moments I've had on my back.
"Either I escaped right away or like [with] Rampage Jackson, I pulled a flying triangle and had him in a triangle right away. With Rashad Evans, I pulled guard, blocked all of his offense and hit him with an elbow from the bottom position that almost knocked him out. I've never had a bad moment on my back, and so there's no reason for me to believe that being on my back is going to be a bad thing."
No matter what happens in the cage on Saturday, though, no matter how good he might look, he knows there are going to be some who will boo him relentlessly.
It's not how he envisioned things when he was new to the sport, but he's matured and learned to accept it.
It's part of life. Jones has finally come to understand he won't please everyone even if he signs an autograph and poses for a picture with every person who attends the show on Saturday.
"The truth of the matter is, I'm in a really good place in my life, just my self security," Jones said. "I'm not OK with being hated. No. No one wants to be hated, and that is a question I wonder about. But at the same time, I've become more mature in this whole thing. I've come to realize that it doesn't matter at the end of the day whether I have haters or not. As long as they're tuning into the fights, which they are, that's all that really matters.
"When it comes to hate, look, I have a lot of people who really support me and are so passionate and genuinely want to see me do well. I fight for those guys. I have a strong group of haters. I have a strong group of supporters and when they come together, they're a big group of people and they do care and that's all that matters."
