Dominance can only match the hype for so long
By DJ Summers
By DJ Summers
2013 is the Year of the Humble Pie for the
UFC fan and media community. First, Anderson Silva gets knocked out clowning
around. Then last Saturday at UFC 165, Jon Jones goes the distance against
Alexander Gustaffson and ends up bloody, bruised, and decidedly
non-dominant.
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| Bleacher Report Photo |
The fight was every bit as competitive a fight
we’ve seen this year. Gustaffson, the only light heavyweight taller (at 6’ 5”)
than Jon Jones (6’ 4”), used his fast hands and boxer’s footwork to neutralize
Jones’ own notorious striking and was able to get on the inside and take the
fight to the champion for three rounds. Between trading blows, Gustaffson
became the first fighter in UFC history to take Jones himself down. Jones
tried, but Gustaffson stuffed his usually successful takedown attempts.
Gustaffson tired in the fourth and fifth rounds,
and Jones won a unanimous decision that the Toronto crowd booed, knowing that
one judge had scored far too highly for the champion and that the Swede
challenger was shortchanged.
Jon Jones is a great fighter; most organizations
rank him the pound for pound greatest. He's been unbreakably dominant in the
light heavyweight division since he first beat the belt off Mauricio Rua in
2011's UFC 128, setting a new record for light heavyweight title defenses.
For his part, Alexander Gustaffson was seen as
an 8-1 underdog. In the usual blogger sphere/Twitterverse loop and in the UFC
press buildup, it was clear that nobody expected much from the Swede, a boxer
who would theoretically be mauled by Jones’ NCAA champion wrestling skills.
But like with the Anderson fight, the fight
community hyped Jones’ dominance to the point of prophecy, like God had already
chiseled the results into stone tablets as a footnote to the Ten Commandments.
Jones himself seemed not to think training was too necessary, letting his body
go flabby before his training camp and in general dismissing the notion he’d
have to try.
There’s no reason to expect that Gustaffson will
do better if and when the pair have a rematch. But we saw a chink in Jones’
armor for the first time, and it could be chalked up to certainty. He didn’t
have quite enough respect for his opponent and broke the cardinal rule in the
UFC: don’t leave the fight in the judge’s hands. There might be a takeaway
there.
For the fans and media who heaved a collective
sigh of relief when Jones won the decision, the same lesson applies. Prediction
only goes so far, and there have been enough upsets in the history of the UFC
for us to avoid the smugness and assurance of choosing a sure thing.
Jon Jones is a champion, there’s no denying
that. He’s had amazing longevity and dominance for such a young fighter. He
took a beating the other night and gave as good as he got, and nobody can take
that victory away. Next time though, it might be wise to scale back the
sculptures of the champion before we embarrass ourselves.
