With three fights in 190 days, Jon Jones staying busy as UFC's most active champion
LAS VEGAS — Jon Jones has become positively Donald Cerrone-esque, and nothing could be better for Jones, his sport or the UFC than that development.
No, he’s not taken to trying extreme sports or even wakeboarding during fight week, but the UFC light heavyweight champion is following a Cerrone trait in a way that does nothing but bode well for his future.
When Jones defends his light heavyweight title at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday against Thiago Santos in the main event of UFC 239 (10 p.m. ET, PPV), it will be his third fight in 190 days, or six months, eight days.
He won the vacant title at UFC 232 when he stopped Alexander Gustafsson at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on Dec 29, then defended it with a victory over Anthony Smith at T-Mobile on March 2.
He has become by far the most active UFC champion. For fighters who have a fight already scheduled, I looked at their last two bouts and their scheduled fight to come up with a time frame between first and last. Heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, for example, has a bout scheduled on Aug. 17 in Anaheim, California, in the main event of UFC 241 against Stipe Miocic. Cormier defeated Miocic at UFC 226 on July 7, 2018, then defended the title against Derrick Lewis at UFC 230 on Nov. 3 in New York. That means he’ll have 407 days between his first and third fights.
This is a graphic of all UFC champions and the number of days it’s been for them to get in their last three fights:
Now, not even this version of Jones can keep up with Cerrone, his one-time teammate. Cerrone’s last three fights came in a 141-day span. The three fights before that were in a 176-day span.
But staying as active as he is serves several benefits for Jones: His base pay is among the highest in the UFC, so he’ll earn substantially more fighting roughly every two or three months than he had on his old pace.
His three fights prior to the current ones came over a span of more than two-and-a-half years while he was in and out of trouble with the law and having issues with PED test violations.
Now, he’s fighting so frequently that he gets out of one fight and after a short break is ready to get back into camp for another.
The other benefit for him is that it will help build himself as a pay-per-view selling attraction even more than he already is. He’s widely regarded as the greatest fighter of all time, and fighting more frequently gets his name in front of the public that much more often.
It also gives him time to accrue more highlight-reel finishes, which he’ll likely get when he meets Santos on Saturday.
Santos is only 15 months removed from a first-round knockout loss to Dave Branch in a middleweight fight, and he’s faced no one remotely as big, as quick, as athletic or with as great of a variety of skills as he’ll see when he’s across from Jones.
Jones clearly enjoys the activity.
“It helps a lot,” he told Yahoo Sports. “There’s a certain amount of comfort I’m developing just being here. I find myself not as nervous. It’s such a familiar feeling, just a different name. But mainly, I’m grateful for the fans. There’s a lot of people who support me and I haven’t always been able to get out here and get in front of everybody. This is my way of giving back to my supporters and telling them, ‘Thank you.’ I’m giving them a lot of content and taking down a lot of big names so they can tell their friends, ‘See. I told you so!’”
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