In his early UFC career, wrestling was a key foundation for
Jon
Jones’ success.
If the action ever got to be too much on the feet — though it
rarely did — Jones, a junior college national champion at Iowa
Central Community College, could always resort to taking his
opponent down and battering them with elbows. In more recent years,
Jones’ wrestling hasn’t been as much of a factor as he’s relied
more frequently on his length and kickboxing to carry him to
victory.
That could change as the Jackson-Wink MMA standout prepares to move
to heavyweight in 2021. Jones, for one, expects to be much more
powerful with his takedowns with added weight and strength in his
lower half.
“When I was 205, I always had a hard time getting down low,” Jones
told
ESPN. “Or hated getting low, with [single-leg takedowns] and
stuff like that. Almost as if my knees were killing me to do
it.
“Now that I’ve been working on my legs so much and they’ve gotten
thicker … I think that’s going to translate into me shooting
high-crotches and shooting double-legs. I think it’ll make those
muscles a lot faster. I predict that my shooting ability and my
wrestling is going to just be faster. There’s just more power, and
my ass has gotten a lot bigger. I think my double-legs are going to
be one of the biggest differences in my game that people are going
to notice.”
Jones revealed that he is currently 240 pounds with a target weight
of 245 for first heavyweight training camp. For now, the opponent
for that initial foray into the big man’s division is unknown.
“Bones” could face the winner of the title bout between Stipe Mioic
and Francis
Ngannou, which is targeted for March, or he could lock horns
with another Top 10 adversary.
“I go back and forth,” Jones said. “Sometimes I think I should take
like a top-10 guy [at heavyweight] and just get my feet wet, figure
out what’s happening. And then the other times, I think, ‘F—k it.
Let’s just go big or go home.’ I’m trying to get these big-money
fights these days. I like taking care of everybody around me.”
Regardless of what the future holds, Jones believes he has made the
right choice with the move up a division after dominating light
heavyweight for years.
“The light heavyweight division was fun, but I just wasn’t scared
of those guys anymore,” Jones said. “Like, none of them. And I
think it showed in some of my performances. Obviously, I still
trained hard. But there was no urgency in some of my last
fights.
“With these next guys I’m going to be going up against, I respect
these guys. These guys are intimidating — they’re intimidating as
s—t. It just gets me up in a whole different way.”