Both Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic are not the kind of fighters that have too many questions surrounding their fighting styles and key attributes. There may be questions ahead of UFC 309 this weekend regarding how Jones looks at heavyweight and whether Miocic will be able to roll back the years but we know a lot of the other variables.
In a recent piece for UFC.com, E. Spencer Kyte sat down with Eric Nicksick, who knows a thing about heavyweight title fights as the coach of Francis Ngannou, to break down this Saturday's headline bout at Madison Square Garden. Starting with "Bones", the Xtreme Couture head coach gave his opinion on what the consensus greatest of all time does better than the rest.
For Jon, obviously, I think it’s his Fight IQ — that’s definitely gonna be No. 1, but the way that he’s able to apply different arts to the game plan; I think that’s what makes him the most intriguing fighter ever. He can beat you in any facet of the game and do it very, very well. He has an ego about him too, where if you watch the Cormier fight, ‘Oh, you’re the best wrestler? Okay, I’ll take your a** down. Gustafsson, you’re the best striker? I’m gonna out-strike you.' There is an edge and an aura to him where he likes to beat his opponent at their best attribute, and that’s what makes him freakin’ amazing.
Nicksick continued, adding what side of Jones' game he believes will be the most important for this fight in particular.
I think the attribute for him is his length — keeping this fight long and at a pace that favors him. I think he’s the ultimate puppet master in the way that he fights — he gets you into his style of fight, he controls that pace, and that’s where I think a lot of guys have problems with him because they get snake-charmed.
Ngannou's coach also highlighted Jones' offense which has seen him showcase a wide array of weapons, many of which have become adopted by other fighters.
It’s in his creativity too that you see how good he is because you don’t get to train a lot of that. You don’t get to prepare for a spinning back elbow off a right cross. That’s natural instinct like Saquon Barkley jumping over a guy; you look at it and go, ‘That’s the level of creativity in his mind that he’s doing that,’ and you can’t train for that, you can’t prepare for that.
Nicksick then turned his attention to the challenger in this Saturday's main event. Having trained Ngannou to fight the former two-time heavyweight champion twice before, analyzing Miocic's game is something that he has plenty of experience doing already.
His best traits are his boxing, his toughness, his durability and his heart, all those things, but as someone that had to game-plan for the guy — when you and I were talking about this fight last week, I was looking at some stuff, and it brought back an anxiety like I was going back and preparing for Stipe again. If you look at the trilogy with Cormier, Stipe looked better in every fight and got better in every fight. He was winning the first fight until he wasn’t, he was losing the second fight until he wasn’t, and then the third fight was a complete wash, but in that third fight, I saw so many different technical evolutions from him in that time.
Nicksick believes that based on Miocic's ability to adapt in the past, we could see even more developments in his game after he's spent over three years outside of the Octagon.
A lot of switch stances, a lot of lateral movement, a lot of shake steps — things that I think are more predicated to lighter weight fighters, and he was implementing these things and very much confused Cormier. So I also think it’s his evolution, and that’s a big question: how has he evolved these last three years? What has he been doing? I have to assume that he’s only gotten better. With the type of personality and champion that he is, (I have to assume) that he’s been working, doing new things.