A former opponent of UFC Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones’ has a strong opinion on how a clash with Francis Ngannou would have played out inside the Octagon following this past weekend’s event.
Jones returned to action in defense of his title at Saturday’s UFC 309 pay-per-view. The Rochester native was putting the heavyweight gold on the line for the first time at Madison Square Garden, having had injury derail his plans to do so in late 2023.
As was scheduled to be the case last year, “Bones” shared the cage with returning former champ Stipe Miocic, despite the presence of an interim titleholder in Tom Aspinall. And as many had predicted given Miocic’s age and lengthy layoff, Jones tore through the veteran en route to a brutal body-kick TKO stoppage in round three.
But the result did little to affect the bid of Jones’ doubters to dismiss claims he sits as the world’s best heavyweight, with Aspinall front and center in that debate following his recent results.
Also in the conversation is Ngannou, who departed the UFC as lineal heavyweight kingpin at the start of 2023 and recently made a successful debut under the PFL banner.
But when it comes to “The Predator,” one man with experience facing Jones has little doubt how that bout would have gone had he stayed in the UFC…
During a recent episode of his Good Guy/Bad Guy show alongside Daniel Cormier on ESPN MMA’s YouTube channel, Chael Sonnen spoke on Jones’ recent triumph in New York City.
“The American Gangster” was impressed, so much so that he now firmly believes the heavyweight iteration of Jones would have had little trouble dispatching Ngannou inside the cage.
“Do you know what Jon would have done to Francis Ngannou in hindsight?” Sonnen said. “Now that we look back, Jon would have picked that big man a part. I mean, I’m just sharing with you, like, that’s a big man’s nightmare. Jon’s not a heavyweight; Jon is fighting at heavyweight. There’s a massive difference.”
A clash between Jones and Ngannou remains the stuff of fantasy, in spite of both the latter and his organization’s higher-ups calling for a cross-promotional showdown between the two behemoths.
