I know you are probably tired of the name Jon Jones by now, but it’s one that we could be hearing for a very long time. Then maybe we won’t. I did this same type of post when everyone was crowning Lyoto Machida as the next unbeatable light heavyweight, but his reign came to an abrupt end at the hands of Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.

After watching Jones destory Rua at UFC 128 this past weekend, the talk will focus on Jones defending his title and breaking some stability to the 205 weight class.

Let’s look at some potential opponents for Jones:

Rashad Evans-We already know that Rashad is next for the champ and the odds-makers are basically giving Evans little to no chance in beating Jones. I think Jones wins that fight simply because he’s bigger, has a huge reach advantage, and a similar skill-set to Evans. However, Evans has trained with Jones in the past, and if anyone knows Jones’s vulnerabilities, it’s Rashad. If Evans were a little bigger, I’d definitely give him a better shot of winning this fight. He has good hand speed, great wrestling and a decent top game. He may be able to strike his way inside and change levels for the take-down similar to what he did against Thiago Silva last year and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson after that. But I’m not sure he’ll be able to get inside or stop Jones from taking him down. We’ll find out soon enough.

Rampage Jackson-If Rampage Jackson is in shape, I’ll give him a shot to beat anyone in the world. He has an iron chin, great knockout power, and solid wrestling skills — when he chooses to use it. He also has great striking defense. I think Jones would have a tough time rag-dolling Rampage the way he has done everyone else. Jones could not afford to make any mistakes with the flashy strikes he throws or else he’d open himself up to Rampage’s counter punches. Jones actually put himself in a couple of bad positions against Shogun this past weekend, but Shogun just wasn’t able to capitalize. For example, one of his spinning back kicks missed badly, leaving him open. Another miss from Jones allowed Shogun to get behind him on the feet, but Rua decided to drop down for a leg lock instead of striking. He couldn’t afford to do that against someone like Rampage.

Thiago Silva-Can he pass his drug tests? Silva has power, good size, and a ground game to match. I think his only shot would be to take Jones down and get top position, though. He could do damage from there. However, he would get picked apart if he couldn’t get Jones down, and he probably couldn’t take him down, to be honest.

That’s pretty much the entire list for the time being. Lyoto Machida’s style wouldn’t give Jones enough problems. I think Jones would eventually take him down and pound him out or win a decision. Forrest Griffin would probably get crushed; he’s striking is solid but he doesn’t have KO power and his takedown defense isn’t good enough to handle Jones’s wrestling. We already saw Ryan Bader get dismantled. Randy Couture is too old.

Of course, Phil Davis may be able to challenge Jones in a few more fights. Now THAT would be interesting because Davis has phenomenal wrestling, physical size, and an evolving submission game. You can watch Davis in action this weekend against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. Davis may be the dark-horse to keep an eye on in the future.

I still think Jones is a wrestler at heart — even though he doesn’t mind striking — and as the old saying goes, wrestlers don’t like being on their backs. I think that’s where the hole is in Jon Jones’s game right now. He might surprise me, but I don’t see him pulling off arm-bars, triangle chokes, or Jiu Jitsu sweeps. Of course, someone has to have the skills to put him on his back, or just take advantage of the opportunities when he puts himself in bad spots with reckless striking.

That’s the beauty of MMA, though, leaving one era while going to another in this every evolving sport. I love it.

So who has the best chance at dethroning Jones?

9 thoughts on “Who in the UFC light heavyweight division is a significant threat to beat Jon Jones?”
  1. “We all saw Jackson beat Machida a few months back”

    …LOL

    Maybe you saw that, but me, Rampage Jackson and a few others saw it a different way.

  2. Rampage, Njokuani, and Sanchez. Kelvin you don’t have the best lineup of guys who you think won close fights :).

  3. I don’t really go by too much of what fight metric says. I tend to disagree with them in some of their assesments. Compustrike is really the only stat based website that I usually go by, but I’ll check it out.

    Also my comment was meant more as a joke than anything else. I really don’t have that strong of an argument either way for Barbosa-Njokuani except the takedown and the spinning back heel kick in the final minute. Those were really the only reasons I leaned towards Barbosa more.

  4. word…didn’t take the comment serious…just wanted to point the stats out….see I feel the same way about compustrike…their stats are way off most of the time imo…

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