LOS ANGELES – Jon Jones has made his share of mistakes outside the Octagon.
But the man many regard as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in the history of mixed martial arts has never lost his focus once the cage door shuts.
The former longtime UFC light heavyweight champion will attempt to cap his return from a year's worth of out-of-competition drama in the main event of UFC 200, when he meets Daniel Cormier and attempts wrest his title back. And as he prepares, Jones sees those who rose and fell in his absence – like Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor – as cautionary tales on buying into your own hype as a fighter.
"I know that I can be beat and I think that's why I haven't been beat," Jones said Tuesday, "where some of these guys really start to believe their hype."
Jones was suspended and stripped of his title following an April 2015 hit-and-run incident in Albuquerque, N.M. While he was gone, Rousey, the former UFC women's bantamweight champion, and McGregor, the current featherweight king, emerged as mainstream stars.
Both Rousey and McGregor also took tumbles – but theirs were inside the Octagon. Rousey lost her title to Holm via head-kick knockout in November and hasn't been seen in the cage since. McGregor went up two weight classes and fought Nate Diaz, only to be submitted in the second round, a defeat he'll try to avenge at UFC 202.
Jones, who has never been legitimately defeated in his career, sees in Rousey and McGregor a pair of fighters who started believing their press clippings and got stung.
"Ronda Rousey, they were saying she's the best fighter of all time and best athlete in the world, stuff like that," Jones said. "And I was happy for her to hear those types of accolades, but once I realized that maybe she was starting to believe it herself, I knew she was in a dangerous spot."
Likewise for McGregor, who proved flawless at 145 pounds en route to winning the title from Jose Aldo in December, then chose to swim with the sharks in a higher weight class.
"Conor McGregor saying these things about just being the baddest dude and 'I'll beat anybody at any weight class,' that's foolish stuff," Jones said. "When you believe the hype to that level, that's when you're in danger."
Bravado, of course, is stock in trade with any fighter worth his or her salt. But Jones isn't afraid to admit that boastful words or tough talk can be a front that masks insecurity. Fear that someone bigger, stronger, and better prepared will come along and take what Jones regards as his is a factor in why he's willing to stay motivated and keep on hustling, a full eight years into his UFC career.
"I talk about being confident in winning all the time, but the reason why I tend to always win is because at the end of the day I'm more nervous than any other fighter," Jones said. "It causes me to spend every night until 3 o'clock in the morning just on my laptop watching the same damn fight over and over again with a notebook, thinking about the ways I can lose, thinking about what I need to do. That's really what I attribute to being undefeated all these years, just how seriously I take it and how much I don't know."
Maybe that's why Jones carries a 22-1 record – the only loss a universally ridiculed disqualification call in a 2009 bout against Matt Hamill that Jones was handily winning – and why he's favored in his rematch against Cormier, whom he defeated in their first bout at UFC 182 by unanimous decision.
Or maybe it has to do with Jones' professional environment. Sure, he's the biggest name at JacksonWink MMA in Albuquerque. But he's surrounded by levelheaded trainers like Greg Jackson, Mike Winklejohn, and Brandon Gibson, who are never going to allow him to believe he's invincible, or that he's learned everything there is to learn as a fighter.
There's also a deep roster of former world champions at JacksonWink, from Carlos Condit to Holly Holm to Andrei Arlovski. By contrast, Rousey and McGregor were clear-cut alphas at their respective gyms – the first to achieve stardom, which leads to the sort of environment in which a fighter can start to believe they're untouchable and tune out even well-meaning criticism.
"There's a lot of guys who are on my team currently, a lot of guys on my team who aren't in the UFC who can beat me on any given day," Jones said. "I get taken down all the time in practice. I get hit pretty hard. I get tapped out all the time in practice.
"To the fans and other fighters, they probably look at me as close to unbeatable," Jones continued. "Whereas if you spend time [at his gym], you see that I'm definitely not a guy that wins every day. I just got beat in a five-mile run by a kid that's like 15, 16 years old. So, I know that I'm not unbeatable."
If Jones, who is currently serving probation as a result of his legal case, proves he can apply those lessons in humility in training to the rest of his life, he'll give himself the opportunity to secure that "greatest MMA fighter of all-time" tag once and for all.
