In his first fight since 2020, Jon Jones looked better than he had in his last few fights at light heavyweight. I guess we shouldn't really be surprised, but somehow he still manages to pull of things that no one really sees coming. We all had so many questions about how the layoff, the age, and the weight would effect his ability to perform at a championship level. Unfortunately, we didn't really get an answer to most of those questions, but the one he answered emphatically is that he is still a championship caliber fighter. He definitely looked reinvigorated after some uninspired looking performances against Thiago Santos and Dominick Reyes (and Even Anthony Smith to a degree). I feel like I have to bring it up every time I talk about him and it's honestly getting a bit tiresome. I think I've been very clear on how I feel about Jon and his history, I'm not going to rehash it every time I talk about him, so go find those other times if you need to. Let's get into the fight.
Normally I break down each fighter's performance separately, but in a fight like this, I don't think that's really necessary since it ended so quickly. We obviously don't know what the long term gameplans were, but we saw both fighters really revert to who we know them to be. Jon came out with the early pressure and was looking to use his length. He poked out a few jabs and straight punches. He didn't look other worldly powerful and he never really has had that kind of power to begin with. I can't say that his punches looked incredibly fast either, but it's hard to say if he was really trying to put something on them or if he was just sort of feeling it out and measuring range. Jon hadn't gotten live action in so long that I do kind of assume it was the latter. Gane did what he has had a bad habit of doing, and that's backing up. He's very good at fighting off of his back foot, but putting his back against the cage was going to cost him sooner or later. He almost got knocked out by Tuivasa because of it and it contributed to him being taken down here as well. Jones got in deep right away and made it to his back before hitting the ground. He would drag Gane to the ground and remained on top the rest of the way. Gane was able to work his way to the side of the cage and even get his back against the fence, but Jones was just way ahead of him. Jon had a choke in briefly before Gane got out of it, but he worked the choke back in that caused Gane to tap. Besides getting hit in the cup, I don't think the fight could have gone any more perfectly for Jones. Seeing him so aggressively including his fiance in the celebration was a bit uncomfortable, but what they do with their relationship is none of my business.
It seems that there's really only one fight for Jon right now and that's Stipe Miocic. Assuming that Francis Ngannou isn't in the fold, which seems like a fair assumption after Dana's comments this week, there's no better fight the UFC could make for him either. I guess the other options are Curtis Blaydes and Sergei Pavlovich, who have their own fight on the books, but there's no way those guys are getting priority over Stipe. Jon wants that fight. Stipe wants that fight. Put them in the main for International Fight Week in July and be done with it. I don't think there's really anything else that needs to be said on that front.
When it comes to Ciryl Gane, he has to be disappointed in what transpired. He's fought for a title in 3 of his last 4 fights and 2 of those went poorly for him. Getting the interim title against Lewis was a great moment, but losing to Francis in the way he did sort of had a negative cloud over his head. No one knew Francis could wrestle and get out grappled by someone like that so cleanly caused a lot of people to look around and maybe second guess whether he was really the guy everyone had thought he was. He was given the best possible matchup for him in Tai Tuivasa and he won that fight, but not before some tense moments. Now he had all those same weaknesses we saw against Francis exposed again by a fighter who was much more equipped to take advantage of them. To provide virtually 0 resistance outside of an illegal groin strike wasn't a good look for Gane to say the least. To add to the disappointment of just losing the biggest fight of his career, he's kind of put himself in no man's land for the next couple of fights. I do believe he's still one of the best heavyweight mixed martial artists in the world, but losing title fights in 2 of his last 3 won't have him near the top of the list for another shot for a little while. I'm not really sure where he goes from here to be honest. I don't think anyone is going to really push to see him in another title fight until he proves that he can defend himself on the ground or there's a champion who will engage in the kind of fight where Gane can accel. I expect Gane to take some time off to kind of take an inventory and recalibrate a little. I think having him be Tom Aspinall's first opponent back from injury would be a huge deal and is likely the biggest fight Gane could get. That would also be enough for Tom to earn a title shot with a win, so makes sense in that regard. The other option is the loser of Pavlovich vs Blaydes. If it is Blaydes that loses, I don't know that anyone is lining up to see how that fight goes though. Ciryl Gane has really made things hard on himself as he's going to have to improve significantly and win at least 3 really hard fights in a row before he's back in the title mix, at least in my opinion.
I know no one really knew what to expect coming into the fight, but I don't think anyone really saw that being the fight. Everything on the Jones side was suggesting that he should be trending in the wrong direction. His last few performances weren't as good, he is in his mid 30s now, he was away for 3 full years, and was fighting around 20-ish pounds heavier than he ever had before. Meanwhile, everything on the Gane side should have indicated improvements. He is 32, but he hasn't been doing MMA for that long, so he should have still been improving, he was the younger, faster, and more powerful fighter, and he was the natural heavyweight. Somehow that got us to the point where Jones walks Gane down and submits him in under 2 minutes almost effortlessly. Seeing that immediately after seeing Valentina lose her title is why MMA is different than any other sport that I've ever seen. What a night. What an event. Simply incredible.
What did you guys think? Do you have any conclusions after the fight or are there too many questions still? Leave any and all thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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