I don't think there is any doubting Jon Jones now

He went into yesterdays championship defense a heavy favorite, to the point that I thought he was a bit overrated. At one point he was -600 and I thought that was rather insulting to Miocic but alas, once the fight began it quickly became evident that it was entirely deserved. Miocic at no point in time appeared as though he had an answer for "Bone" and we need to keep in mind that Miocic, despite being a bit old, is definitely no slouch.

src

In a way I was happy to see Jones do as well as he did but at the same time I was a bit disappointed that Stipe couldn't make more of a game of it and much of this has to do with the fact that Jones has a serious prima-donna attitude. For someone that has been as dominant as this man has been he certainly whines an awful lot and despite being in very serious trouble multiple times for various things that happened in his personal life, the UFC always stood by him. Now it would be very easy to assume, rightfully, that the UFC was simply protecting one of their cash-cows and that perhaps their real relationship with one another is one of downright hatred. This could be why Jones is constantly threatening to retire and there is constantly rumors circulating about how he is dodging certain fighters. He still maintains that he will not fight Tom Aspinall but a lot of people have incorrectly misconstrued this as Jones being "afraid." I think Jones talks a lot of BS but I agree with him when he implies that his time left in UFC is limited and Aspinall is not on his level. Jones maintains that he will not fight Aspinall at all unless he is offered what Jones has called "fuck you money" for the fight.

Even though I think Jones is an arrogant prick this is the right attitude for him to take. These top-brass fighters need to get as much money as they possibly can from UFC, because it wont be offered to them otherwise.

Back to last night's fight though. Jones managed amazingly to stay away from his eye-poke technique that many people loathe about him but this time he seriously worked the body of Stipe and the strike that ended the fight was a vicious kick to the liver.

src

I was a semi-professional MMA fighter more than 20 years ago and I can tell you from experience, this sort of contact is something that you cannot train for and I don't even know why it hurts as much as it does. I have broken ribs and other bones and neither of those can compare to the intense pain that you feel when a very sharp strike the liver happens. It just takes the wind out of you and completely cramps up your entire body, you feel like things are broken in you that aren't even close to it.

I am sure there is some doctor-types out there that can perhaps explain better than that but that is what it felt like to me. You recover from it pretty quickly but it kind of feels like getting kicked in the nuts if your nuts were located on the side of your torso.

For Jones to target and hit that area with such incredible accuracy (look at Jon's eyes) is just amazing and a true testament to the type of pedigree that we are dealing with here. Jones doesn't swing wildly, every move of his seems to be calculated and after this fight I am sure he will be put right back at the top of the GOAT picture. He was fading from that conversation because of years of inactivity but he proved all of us naysayers wrong.

src

Thankfully, Jones has been very public about not wanting an Aspinall fight or really a fight with anyone else in the floundering heavyweight division. Instead, he has stated he wants a super-fight with Alex Pereira and man oh man do I hope that can happen. That matchup could end up being the biggest UFC event of all time but the expectations of it will be extremely high.

I'll write more on my thoughts about that at a later time, because there is a lot to dig into there. It is all a moot point right now because it is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment and would take a year at least to organize. I think we can safely say that even though Dana White says he opposed to the idea at present that there is one thing that really motivates Mr. White and that is money. A match between those two would likely see PPV buys that have never been seen before.

On a side note I found the Chandler Olivera fight, which I had been seriously looking forward to, to be quite boring. That's what happens when you spend 15 of the 25 minutes of the entire match rolling around on the ground though.