UFC champ Jon Jones stays on top of the fight game

NEW YORK — Time to find out just how far Jon Jones is willing to go with this gambit.

Jones spent the entire week leading up to his heavyweight title defence against Stipe Miocic at UFC 309 Saturday citing a thousand different reasons he isn’t going to fight his division’s interim title holder, Tom Aspinall, if he won.

He dismissed Aspinall as unproven and a nobody. He said the fight would do nothing for his legacy and that his career had moved beyond giving dangerous, up-and-coming fighters opportunities. He called Aspinall a big mouth, disrespectful. He said he’d rather fight light-heavyweight champion Alex Pereira instead.

Was it all in service of riling everyone up and spurring a reaction to help sell the Miocic fight? Was he simultaneously building interest in the Aspinall fight while creating leverage against his employer? Was he leaning further into the heel characterization the MMA world’s bestowed upon him since he began running afoul of the law and drug testers a decade ago? Was it all of the above?

Or does Jones really mean it?

“I’m not really worried about the Tom fight. I’m worried about the Pereira fight. That’s what I want to do,” Jones said after extending his UFC record for title wins to 16 by overwhelming Miocic over two rounds before folding him with a cruel spinning back kick to the ribs in the third. “And if the UFC wants to have me back, then I think that's the fight they'll make.”

Jones made that statement sitting at a podium in the depths of Madison Square Garden at 3:45 a.m. ET Sunday morning. Not 30 minutes earlier, UFC president Dana White sat at that same podium and delivered a completely contradictory message.

“You know what tonight told me? There's no (expletive) way I make the Pereira fight,” White said. “Jon's too big. Great wrestler. You see how he took Stipe down in that first round? I like Alex Pereira. I like him personally. It just doesn't make sense to make that fight.”

Now, to be fair, Jones did suggest at various points Sunday morning that he would entertain the Aspinall fight if it came with a career-defining payday. And the way White’s talking about the fight, it sounds like there will be a fairly substantial pie to split up.

“It will be the biggest heavyweight fight in UFC history — by a long shot,” White said. “It doesn't have the potential. It's going to be the biggest heavyweight fight ever. It'll probably be the biggest fight we've ever done.”

So, in White’s view, would Jones be well compensated for that fight?

“He will be,” White said. “Jon's always been well-compensated. I would never put his total purse number out there, but it's (expletive) massive. He's made a lot of money in his career.”

And yet, it sounds like the cheque Jones is after would well exceed that.

“If I give (Aspinall) the opportunity to fight me, I want to be so compensated — I want that (expletive) you money. That’s just what it is. My life is perfect without him. I don’t need him at all. And he needs me. And that’s a good place to be in a negotiation,” Jones said. “I want to be compensated to the point where if I won or lost, then it really wouldn’t matter.”

And just for the sake of completeness as we consider all of this public negotiation between Jones and the UFC, it’s worth noting that White left room for Jones to fight Pereira after all.

“If they both want it bad enough and they're both hounding me or something, maybe I would do it,” White said. “Just so we're clear, I don't want to make any of that kind of money. I want Pereira to stay where he is and do what he does. But again, if they go crazy on me and they want to do it, then what am I going to do? They're grown-ass men and I'm sure the fans want to see it. I'm sure you want to see it. I guess we'll talk about it.”

Never forget Jones is really, really good at this game. The one he plays inside the octagon and the other he plays outside of it when speaking before microphones and knowing his value to the UFC. Those two games mirror each other. He is cunning, calculated and proficient in both. He dictates the pace of play while working on multiple tracks. He constantly varies what he puts out — whether strikes or leverage plays — so that you don’t know what’s coming next.

That he does all that so well outside the octagon is why he’s holding copious leverage in determining where his career goes from here. He’s said he could fight Pereira, could fight Aspinall, could retire. And that he does all that so well inside of it is why he’s one of the greatest fighters of all time. And still UFC’s heavyweight champion after Saturday’s defence.

“This guy's fight IQ is off the charts,” White said. “This thing had upset written all over it, too. All the talk was about Jon Jones. Stipe seemed pissed, focused. He came here to win.”

But what he ended up doing was retiring. White’s accurate — Miocic clearly put considerable effort into his preparation for this fight, weighing in at 248.6 pounds. That’s substantially higher than the 233 pounds we last saw him at, and it didn’t take a fine eye for body composition to see that it was mostly good weight.

Yet, Jones made Miocic look light. He had the speed and precision to pierce Miocic’s defence, the ease of movement to quickly retreat from his flurries, and the power to rock him repeatedly. A 37-year-old coming off major surgery who’s been fighting professionally for 17 years isn’t supposed to look so crisp.

“I really want to be the best Jon Jones that I can be. And I really feel like I'm doing it right,” Jones said. I'm really proud of marching to the beat of my own drum. It really feels good. I'm doing it my way. And it feels good.

“You see athletes stick around too long and I don't want to be one of those guys, man. I just want to win in every form. I want to win in the record books. I want to win financially. I just want to win. And there's a lot of people that are pissed off right now. And it just lets me know that I'm doing it right. I'm doing it my way. It should only make sense to me. It should only feel good to me. And right now it does.”

Saturday, Jones was on the front foot from the jump, taking control of the centre of the octagon and pushing Miocic onto his heels. When the two came together midway through the first, Jones threw his opponent to the mat with ease and spent the rest of the round in heavy top control raining elbows onto Miocic’s head. Two of the three judges recorded it a 10-8 round as Miocic sat dazed in his corner.

The second round was less punishing as the pair felt each other out, but Jones remained in control of where and how the fight was waged. This was when the disparity in skill and technique really revealed itself as Jones showed the more diverse array of strikes — elbows, knees, kicks — while Miocic leaned on his boxing.

It was a foretelling five minutes, as Jones used his varied striking to set up the spinning back kick that ended it, crumpling Miocic with a stiff heel dug into his midsection. It’s a kick Jones has been working on three days a week during three-hour training sessions with one of his striking coaches, Paige Bates, who owns and operates a taekwondo gym near his home in Albuquerque, N.M.

Ultimately, Jones out-struck Miocic 104-42, per UFC Stats, landing a remarkable 80 per cent of his significant strikes. There were moments when Miocic staged flurries that forced Jones to retreat. But, quantitatively, this was a one-sided deconstruction.

“I’m done. I’m hanging them up,” Miocic said afterward in characteristically understated fashion. “I’m retiring, thank God.”

That’s about as fitting a way as Miocic could go out. Subdued, unceremonious, as if it was hardly worth mentioning. His UFC resume will age well, particularly considering how difficult it is to string wins together at heavyweight. And particularly considering how difficult it is to look good against Jones in his current form.

“Stipe can take punishment. He's a nightmare. You can hit him and hit him and hit him. And he shows no emotion,” Jones said. “I think that's why he's a six-time world champion.”

That Jones looked as good as he did Saturday only raises the interest in an Aspinall fight. Whatever Jones’s best-before date is, he’s evidently yet to cross it. And while Aspinall is a very well-rounded, athletic fighter, it would be awfully cavalier for anyone to assume he’s going to run through Jones in his current form.

The traditional Jones playbook now is to disappear in a shroud of ambiguity and lay low for some time, turning up the heat on the UFC until the right opportunity presents itself. Avoid interviews; send the odd cryptic tweet here and there to keep your name in the MMA headlines; leave White to duck and dodge all the questions about what comes next. The thing Jones has clearly come to appreciate late in his career is the value of timing in this sport; Of when to stay busy and when to stay quiet.

To wit, just as light-heavyweight contenders such as Thiago Santos and Dominick Reyes began to expose slippages in his game, Jones vacated the belt and staged a hold-out in pursuit of higher compensation. He didn’t return and make his long-discussed move to heavyweight until early 2023 after Francis Ngannou — then and perhaps still the most dangerous heavyweight in the sport — vacated the title and left the company.

That created a vacuum for Jones to step in and fight a woefully overmatched Ciryl Gane for the title. Jones cut straight through Gane and won via submission two minutes into the fight. He then hand-picked his next opponent, calling out Miocic — who at that point was 41 and hadn’t fought in two years — for his first defence.

Jones has been charting a purposefully considered path for some time now, choosing who he does and does not fight carefully in order to preserve his undeniably great competitive legacy. He’s constantly sought to maximize reward and minimize risk, which is the basic calculus behind why he’s vowed not to fight Aspinall in a title unification bout. And why he’s lobbying for a fight with Pereira, a smaller fighter who’s been outwrestled by middleweights.

“I feel like I'm at a place now where I want to take what I find to be super fights. I don't want to fight dangerous up-and-comers anymore. I want to fight dangerous, established champions,” Jones said. “So, Tom can have the heavyweight championship. I don't really care about that. My value doesn't lie in belts anymore. I've created something much bigger. I want Pereira.

“And if it doesn’t line up … man, if that was my last fight ever, then I’m cool with that. That was the way to do it. … I think one of the really good things about negotiating is being willing to walk away from a deal. And that's the deal that I want. And if that's not what the fans want, then I guess I'll say sayonara.”

Jones spent his week giving every UFC fan on the planet a reason to despise him and tune in Saturday hoping to see his head get taken off. He teased retirement, he diminished his division’s interim title holder and he goaded fans as illogical and irked by his accomplishments. He simultaneously sold hypothetical fights with Pereira and Aspinall in the process, and even minimized UFC itself, declaring himself “bigger than belts.”

Then he stepped in the octagon and demolished an all-time great heavyweight before picking back up where he left his public negotiating off. It takes an uncommon athlete to play gambits like these in such a cutthroat business. And Jones has put himself in this position by being one of the most sublimely talented and successful fighters of multiple generations.

As UFC’s biggest draw this side of Conor McGregor, Jones holds massive leverage to dictate his future path. UFC isn’t going to turn down a Jones fight. And if Jones is truly prepared to retire, the matter of whether it’s against Aspinall for the heavyweight strap or vacating that belt and pursuing a super fight with Pereira may ultimately be up to him.

Toward the end of his press conference Sunday morning, someone told White that the early odds for an Aspinall vs. Jones fight had just been released. Aspinall was a -135 favourite; Jones, a +115 underdog. White grinned and nodded his head.

“That’s awesome,” he said. “I love it. I love it.”