I am marking your words...
Jones is undefeated in MMA (Excluding a DQ he was winning easily) and literally has only one close fight (with Gus).
He uses the rules in the ring to his advantage (open hands extended, teep kicks to knees) but he has never cheated in a fight. The rules have changed and you can expect the Jackson camp to adjust accordingly.
In his case, why does he need courage to step inside the ring over and above the usual amount? The guy is pretty much the greatest MMA fighter of this generation and already beat DC easily. Plus he knows (and DC knows) that he is deep inside DC's head. Add in DC's declining physical skills and quite possibly a brutal weight cut, Jones comes in supremely confident.
There has been nothing in the ring (other than cruising to an easy decision over OSP that could be attributed to working off ring rust) that leads anyone to believe that Jones won't show up and do what he does best.
You are theorizing about crap you and I know nothing about.
I am not theorizing, I am expressing an educated opinion. Educated in that I have witnessed first hand such self destruction, numerous times, and Jon has all the tell tale signs. This is not based on any hatred of Jones, or love for DC, it is based strictly on Jones' previous behavior, as well as the behavior he is currently exhibiting. I agree with you on a lot of your comments, Jones could have been the greatest to ever step into a cage, but he himself has seen to it how that will never become reality.
In recent interviews, especially the most recent one where he is referring to himself in the 3rd person, and is clearly intoxicated on something, Jon is obviously masking or hiding something, and his body language seems to show some severe self doubt as well, first time we have ever seen that in him.
You can swing all you like, you can buy into the things Jones is saying, but trying to say DC's skills are in such decline, how you believe Jones is in his head is way off the factual mark. Saying those things is the same thing you are trying to accuse me of doing.
As I stated, let's see Jon actually step into the Octagon, and go from there. I have serious doubt that happens in the first place. Did you watch the OSP fight, that fight was after a shorter layoff than this fight will be, and Jones did not look good in there. His previous fluidity was absent, a lot of his speed was lost to all of the extra muscle he had packed on (a fact that was literally acknowledged by Jackson himself, immediately after the fight, while they were still in the cage) His timing was off, his comfort being in the cage was not there. Jones won the fight, but let's not pretend it was a super dominating performance. If you think that OSP on that night could have survived 2 rounds with the Jones that won the title, you would just be wrong. To ignore Jon's lackluster performance that night is a huge mistake that I see a lot of people making. If you ignore that performance, then you are simply blinded by your love of Jones, and if you acknowledge his performance that night, but then try to some how sell that following an even longer layoff he is somehow going to be improved, well, that would simply be delusional thinking.
At the end of the day, it is a fight, and Jones is one of, if not The, most gifted fighters to ever grace us with being able to watch him perform. He absolutely can win this fight, I simply do not believe it will happen. So, anyone who states that DC wins this fight unequivocally, and that Jones cannot possibly win, then those people are just as delusional as the people who say the opposite about Jones. However, the deck is stacked, heavily, against Jones right now, and it is 100% self inflicted. I don't have any hatred in my heart for Jones, don't know the man personally, but he has some very real demons, and if he refuses to acknowledge them, and deal with them accordingly, then we are sadly only witnessing the beginning. We have seen this same story, way too many times.
I was a huge Tyson fan back in his day, still have every fight on VHS, recorded live, you would be hard pressed to find a bigger fan. We saw all of this same type of self destructive behavior then, and the delusional fans that go along with it. I know, as I was one of those fans. I refused to accept that any man on the planet could ever beat Mike, Buster was the only one at first, and that had to be a fluke, no way he could repeat that. It had to be Robin Given's fault, she had destroyed him mentally, he needed to get away from her, and the old Tyson would immediately return. I made excuses for every single loss Tyson had after the Douglas fight, told everyone how when he got out of prison, the old Tyson was back, would not taste defeat again, and I actually got into a couple of fights myself, defending Tyson when people would say negative things about him. etc... etc... So, yeah, I get it, I have been there, but I learned a lot from that story, and many stories just like it before and after.
Enjoy the fight, if it happens, and pull for whomever you choose, and I will do the same. When it is all said and done, and the dust has settled, we will all, hopefully, have a clear cut winner, and not be discussing some sort of ridiculous controversy for the next 6 months. That is all we can wish for at this point.
