Jon Jones determined to make history
By BOB EMANUEL JR. | Scripps Howard News Service
For Jon Jones, merely retaining his Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight belt is not enough. Jones, 26, wants to be known as the greatest mixed martial artist to grace the Octagon.
Jones signed with the UFC with a 6-0 record just four months after he turned professional in 2008. Since then, he compiled a 12-1 mark with the lone loss coming via disqualification for illegal elbows against Matt Hamill in 2009. Jones became the youngest fighter to win a championship in the UFC when he defeated Mauricio “Shogun” Rua to capture the title in March 2011.
Jones reeled off five consecutive title defenses in the division to tie Hall of Famer Tito Ortiz’s record for consecutive and overall title defenses.
Saturday night, Jones will attempt to break his tie with Ortiz and extend his UFC light heavyweight record nine-fight winning streak when he faces Alexander Gustafsson in the main event of UFC 165 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
A victory would move Jones closer to former middleweight champion Anderson Silva’s UFC record of 10 consecutive title defenses, a streak that was snapped earlier this year when Chris Wiedman defeated Silva.
“I’ve set a lot of goals and becoming the greatest light heavyweight, record-wise, is definitely a big goal of mine,” Jones said. “Guys like Anderson Silva, with 10 title defenses, it just motivates me a lot. It’s just to keep moving forward and things like that. So, yes, this record means everything to me and did kind of since my very first fight.”
Gustafsson, who won six consecutive fights to improve to 15-1, is an inch taller than Jones at 6 feet, 5 inches, and nullifies Jones’ typical reach advantage. Despite his similarities to Gustafsson, Jones believes his skills are simply better.
“I just believe I use my reach better,” he said. “If you watched my fights and you watched Alexander’s fights, he gets hit a lot with a lot of different punches. With me, I’ve gone through some fights where fighters have only punched me once … I’m fighting against the best guys in the world and a lot of them never even get a chance to punch me in the face throughout the fight. So I just believe that I use my timing, my rhythm, my distance a lot better than his.”
UFC interim bantamweight champion Renan Barao will attempt to defend his title in the co-main event. The remainder of the main card, which can be seen at 4 p.m. HST on pay-per-view, features heavyweights Brendan Schaub vs. Matt Mitrione, middleweights Costa Philippou vs. Francis Carmont and lightweights Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Pat Healy.
The preliminaries, which can be seen live on Fox Sports 1 at 2 p.m. HST, includes lightweights Myles Jury vs. Mike Ricci; bantamweights Ivan Menjivar vs. Wilson Reis; welterweights Stephen Thompson vs. Chris Clements; and bantamweights Mitch Gagnon vs. Dustin Kimura.
