But your last comment is the big one for me. I watched a repeat of Jone's UFC debut fight a few nights ago, and he has made a scary amount of improvement since then. And he will grow in every fight he takes on.
While I agree with you for the most part, I think the whole "oh he's only 24, he's just going to get better and better" is being played up a bit too much. Will he get better by spending more time in the cage and gaining that experience? Absolutley, 100%. But that does not mean his technique is going to get any better. This is why I was worried when Jones started training at Jackson's a couple of years ago when Jones only had only been fighting as a pro for about a year. Gregg Jackson and Mike Winklejohn don't try to change a fighter's style whatsoever - they just try to make them better at what they already do. Now that's fine if you're a GSP and you join the camp after having tons of experience in fights and already have an established style, but that's bad news if you're just developing as a fighter. Instead of trying to get Jones to learn proper striking techniques, they just go "that crazy stuff is great Jon, let's focus on that!" So you end up with a guy with a massive reach but can't really offensively box properly and instead of trying to finish a fight with effective strikes prefers to try spinning back elbows and front push kicks to the knee. They're never going to teach him in a way that benefits his physical skills. For crying out loud, they trained Keith Jardine for 10 years and never taught him how to defend a left hook. They trained Rashad for years and ignored his positively dreadful foot work, which Rashad didn't get to work on until he started training with Grudge in Colorado.
Jones has come a long way with what he has, but what's going to happen when he can't fall back on his reach? At some point you're going to run into a guy who isn't afraid to close the distance on you and fight in the pocket, and what then? What if he fights another tall lanky guy with a similar reach to his own? If you don't have really good fundamentals to fall back on, you're screwed.
There's no doubt in my mind that his camp will train very hard to negate any advantages Evans may have had over him before too. I think Evans is a more well rounded fighter than Rampage but I think Jones still takes the fight.
One of the stories I have heard more than a few times about Rashad and Jones training together was an instance where Rashad took Jones down, and Jones simply couldn't get back up to save his life. He asked Rashad to let him up, and Rashad said no - he needed to learn to be able to get back to his feet on his own and not rely on getting stood up by the ref. Jones couldn't get up and Rashad was on top of him for something close to an hour before the training session ended.
Now, is Jones going to be training to defend shots and to scramble back to his feet? Of course. But what great wrestlers does he have to work with? GSP isn't going to train with him as he's boys with Rashad, and the only other wrestlers at Jackson's are lightweights. Meanwhile, Rashad is going to be working with Dan Cormier, Mo Lawal and probably even Phil Davis - three world class wrestlers.
I think Jones' offensive firepower will be too much for Rashad, but nobody should be shocked if Rashad just takes Jones down and beats him up. That fight is going to be incredibly competitive and we'll see how Jones handles being in a back and forth fight for the first time.
Brian.
