Thus far, no man has been able to win a fight against Jon Jones via decision, KO, or submission. So even with the one loss on Jon Jones’s record, it feels fair to say that no man has ever beaten Jon Jones. So Anthony Smith did not join an exclusive club when he, too, fell to Jones at UFC 235. All of Jones’s past opponents (save Matt Hamill) have felt the brunt of that letdown with the highest of stakes and the world spectating. This has been of absolutely no consolation to the Lionheart, who has Jon Jones on the brain around the clock, waiting for the opportunity to remove his name from the list:
“I have become absolutely obsessed with Jon Jones,” Smith confessed in an interview with Submission Radio. “It’s almost embarrassing how much I have focused on, studied…it’s become an obsession. You know, I’m sitting next to Rashad Evans during the fight, and I’m, like, learning Jon’s mannerisms. I can almost tell you what he’s thinking sometimes. It’s weird.”
Anthony Smith then went on to describe a byproduct of that obsession: an ability to predict everything Jon Jones was going to do in his latest fight against Thiago Santos at UFC 239. Smith believes that same knowledge of Jones would crossover into a future rematch between himself and Jones, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will benefit him:
“Here’s the problem: what are you gonna do about it? That’s the new problem,” Smith said. “The problem is getting to Jon Jones. That’s the problem. And that’s, honestly, where my focus is, really, mentally. And I’ve been reaching out, and talking to different people, and looking for different ideas.
“And it doesn’t matter how defensively sound I am. It doesn’t matter how many takedowns I defend. It doesn’t matter how much he doesn’t want to engage in jiu-jitsu. If I can’t get to him, I can’t beat him. So that’s kind of where my mindset is, and I don’t give a shit if he sees it. I’ve said it over, and over, and over again: I’m coming, and there’s no one who’s gonna stop me.”
Do you believe Anthony Smith would defeat Jon Jones in a rematch?
