Now that Jon Jones once again proved his dominance by defeating Daniel Cormier at UFC 214, the next move that he is looking at is a jump up to heavyweight. He already began step one of this campaign by calling out former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.
Lesnar remains uncertain about his MMA future, and this has also opened the possibility of Jones facing current champion Stipe Miocic. However, this is an idea that Jones and his team are not too keen on.
In another interview with Submission Radio, Jones’ striking coach Mike Winkeljohn explained why facing Lesnar is the much more appealing next option for them.
“Well, they’re different type of fighters. Stipe can knock out a horse when he hits them. I’m not saying Brock couldn’t, he’s just slower when he does it,” Winkeljohn said. “And Brock’s gonna, you gotta get out of the way of Brock when he’s driving forward. So definitely different fights. But what you said earlier is the key.”
“You know, Jon is a light heavyweight, so you can’t ask somebody just to step up and fight the best in the world at heavyweight and forego the money fight against someone who they think they can beat,” he continued. “Jon said it himself, he thinks a good big man always beats a good smaller man. Jon Jones said that himself in a press conference.”
“Do I think Jon thinks he can beat Stipe? Yeah. Do I think he might have said it? Yes. But I like the Brock Lesnar fight for right now. And we need to work on some skills and get some weight on Jon before he fights with Stipe, because I think that Stipe is a harder fight.”
Winkeljohn also recognizes the possibility of Jones being forced to fight off his back after he is taken down by Lesnar, but is confident that his fighter would be able to handle the situation. But when the action is on the feet, Winkeljohn is expecting at least a knockout.
“Oh, I sure do. I think Jon can knock out anybody with his strikes,” Winkeljohn said. “The problem in the past was, Jon’s striking was not his base, wrestling was his base. So all those years when he came over to us, it was just kind of working with Jon, he was doing a lot of repetition, a lot of different unpredictable type of shots. But it was always a lot of reps, a lot of, I want to say just “bop, bop, bop, bop,” that type of thing.”
“But you saw in this fight with Daniel it was time. We had that conversation that it was time to go hard and he started letting some things go hard. And that’s kind of a first for Jon Jones, letting his 100-percenters go. And he believes. And once he believes in something, like I said about Jon Jones, he always makes it work.”