Back in February, when Cris Cyborg was fighting a suspension from USADA – from which she eventually received a retroactive exemption – Coach Mike Winkeljohn took to the media to give his thoughts on a potential fight between Cyborg and notable Jackson-Wink talent Holly Holm. The long and short of those thoughts being that, if such a fight were to happen, Cyborg should have to sit out a year first, to ensure that she’s clean.
So, with all the talk about Brock Lesnar – himself currently suspended for PED use –potentially fighting Jon Jones, it only stands to reason that Winkeljohn would feel just as strongly; that Lesnar needs to take more time and really prove he’s clean, rather than being rushed into a bout with the Jackson-Wink light heavyweight champion.
As he explained in a recent interview with Submission Radio, however, that isn’t really the case.
“Well, you know what you got in front of you,” Winkeljohn said when asked if he had any hesitations about Lesnar vs. Jones given his past comments on Cyborg. “Like I said, so you got this guy who’s just gigantic and stuff and coming at Jon, so it is what it is. No, it’s not really a concern with him. I think guys that have done PEDs in the past is different than girls that have done them in the past, because they do get bigger, but you kind of expect that with the guy. The girls that do it, you know, I’m always worried about, okay, they’re clean, but what about their past? Did it change bone structure? Did it change density on different things? That’s where things change a little bit. So I think it has more of an effect for girls than it does for guys, not that it’s not cheating for guys as well.”
“I would love to see that fight happen,” he continued, “but I would put Jon fighting a lot sooner than that one fight between (him and Brock) just because of the fact that I don’t think Brock can fight for a while. But if that was possible, I would love for that to be the next fight.”
As for how the fight might go, if it were to happen? Winkeljohn put it out there that he does think Lesnar could get Jones down, but might get more than he bargained for if he did.
“He could,” he responded when asked if Lesnar could take Jones down, “but people will be surprised. You haven’t seen Jon on his back, what Jon can do. He’s got some great sweeps in there, but also, getting Jon on his back is very hard. His hips are first all the time, he’s very good in the scramble and Jon’s hard to take down. It’s like I said, Brock’s gonna shoot on him, but it doesn’t mean Jon’s gonna be right in front of him. So expect Jon, like I said, to get out the tracks, and I see Brock coming so hard that he’s gonna be one of those things, I’d like to see Jon get out of the way and Brock basically run into the cage, you know, in essence, that kind of theory, get out of the way. So stuffing the shot is different than not letting the shot happen and doing things to your strikes that makes him not wanna shoot. You know, scare him kind of like Alistair Overeem did. So there’s a lot of different ways for the fight to play out.”
‘Coach Wink’ also talked about a potential matchup with Stipe Miocic, and why it’s the harder fight for Jones, as well as his belief that Jones could knock Lesnar out. So give the whole thing a listen.
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