UFC 239: Jon Jones is far too skilled to get caught out by Thiago Santos

THE level of competition in the UFC’s light heavyweight division has gone from bad to worse over the last eighteen months.

Daniel Cormier went to heavyweight and has one foot out the door. Alexander Gustafsson retired. Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson left last year to become a bodybuilder. Jimi Manuwa and Jan Blachowicz edged their way towards a title shot by being the best of what was left, and then a middle of the pack middleweight named Thiago Santos moved up and smoked them both in sloppy, chaotic fights.

Santos has been rewarded with a title shot, following fellow former middleweight Anthony Johnson’s, and presumably preceding whatever Jones and the UFC are setting up with middleweight interim champion, Israel Adesanya.

Most are pessimistic of Santos’ chances, and rightly so. He is a plodding banger who can surprise with wheel kicks and who has great hitting power, but even in his own area of the fight he is wild and unpolished.

Thiago Santos in a nutshell: wheel kick the opponent in the head and then somehow wind up underneath them.

Moreover, since moving up to light heavyweight he has looked considerably slower. His two performances against top light heavyweights served to highlight the mediocrity of the division more than a transformation in Santos. Jimi Manuwa—always a little chinny and prone to fluster—was dispatched by a sustained, one-and-a-half round bum rush. The awkward Jan Blachowicz traded telegraphed, naked low kicks with Santos from eight feet out, then finally sprinted onto a check hook which Santos swung with his chin high in the air.

The focus of this match up and the marketing has been on Thiago Santos’ power and how “it only takes one”. The problem is that Jones is excellent at slowing his opponents down, staying out of range, and smothering them when they close to attack. Expect Jones to spend much of the fight mirroring Santos’ stance and retreating and circling out whenever Santos comes in. It is in this way that Jones sets up powerful body kicks as the opponent turns, and gets the opponent coming in on a predictable line—where he can jam them and wear them down with low line side kicks and oblique kicks to the front of the knee.

Jones will almost certainly get Santos pursuing him and use this to duck into clinches where he can smother Santos’ power and wear on Santos’ gas tank. Jones will often just lean on his man and post his head, to set up his infamous arm crank when they take an underhook.

Against men like Daniel Cormier and Glover Teixeira, Jones pushed them to the fence, posted his head, and freed his arms to start hitting the body and elbowing the head. This is especially worrying for Santos as even a dazed and confused Jimi Manuwa was able to tie him up along the fence and hammer him with the same hand trap to elbow repeatedly.

Gegard Mousasi and Eric Spicely both escaped Santos’ power by tying up with him and he looked completely helpless against both. Spicely was supposed to be a tune up in front of a home crowd and he actually pulled half guard on Santos with Brazilian unable to mount any meaningful offence from the top.

Jones isn’t without weakness. Drawing out his kicks and either withdrawing the lead leg or parrying the kick across the body has been a reliable way to get him out of position and enter with counters, and his legs are often vulnerable to low kicks because they are always occupied in moving as a ring general would in boxing rather than in position to check kicks, Muay Thai style. The problem is that Santos is unlikely to unveil beautiful ring cutting or slick counter kicking techniques this late into his career even with a title on the line.

There is always the chance that Santos connects that one good punch. Nothing could be funnier and considering how reliant the UFC has become on Jones’ in-ring dominance as a draw, and a tidy sum could be made from betting on one of the larger underdogs in MMA history. But Jones is just so much more skilled, in so many more areas, and he reliably shows it in every fight where Santos has shown nothing of what he would need to deal with Jones’ usual game.

Latest odds:

Jones 1/9 Santos 11/2