With Jon Jones looking more likely than ever to make his heavyweight debut, it feels like his longstanding rivalry with middleweight champion Israel Adesanya won’t get resolved. However, according to Jones’ coach Brandon Gibson, Jon Jones is still up for the challenge, and would relish the opportunity to “bust him up”.
“I mean, I’d love it. I’m sure they would sell a lot of pay-per-views. That would be a fun one for ‘Bones.’ I know he’d love to make that a dirty fight and bust him up worse than he did Brandon Vera. So yeah, I would love to see that fight one day.”
Coach: Jon Jones Still Wants to Fight Israel Adesanya and “Bust Him Up”
In addition to this, Gibson claimed that Jones would “absolutely” win a standup-oriented fight against Adesanya, one of the most accomplished fighters on the UFC roster.
“Yeah, absolutely. Jon’s gone toe-to-toe with some of the best strikers in the game’s history. Guys like [Lyoto] Machida and [Quinton] ‘Rampage’ [Jackson] and [Mauricio] ‘Shogun’ [Rua] and Alexander Gustafsson. Jon can hang with any of these guys.
Jon, with the power and the skill set that he’s really developed over the last two years, I think he’s going to surprise a lot of opponents, a lot of opponents’ teams, and a lot of fans when he gets in there and gets to showcase his new skill set.”
Gibson conceded that Israel Adesanya has some serious weaponry at his disposal, too, which may well be what keeps Jones, who looked unbeatable at light heavyweight once upon a time, interested in the matchup. It’s just a matter of whether Adesanya will move up to heavyweight, as he once promised, or if Jones will shed the extra poundage he put on over the past two years to meet “The Last Stylebender” in the middle.
“He’s also brilliant when it comes to this game. His ability to judge speed and time and range and angles and level changes is very unique. He’s already become a dominant champ at middleweight. I think he has some of the best feints in the game. He’s so good at using his feints to create the openings and in that split second, depending on the opponent’s reaction to that feint, identifying the opening and taking it.
Just ultra sharp. Ultra-sharp defense. He doesn’t have any big, drastic movements. It’s not like that Dominick Cruz style that we saw, he pretty much over-dips, over-slips.
Israel is just pinpoint making guys miss by a millimeter. So that’s something I really admire in his style and in his game and there’s elements of it that have definitely inspired me to try to put little sprinkles of that with my own fighters.”
Is Jones vs Adesanya the cross-divisional fight fans didn’t know we needed? Let us know in the comments.
