This Saturday at UFC 232, both Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson will make their returns to competition after long layoffs. The reason for the layoffs for these elite fighters obviously differ quite drastically, but the mystery of what changes have been made on both sides since their last fight is one of the many factors that make Jones vs. Gustafsson II so intriguing.
In Jon Jones’s last fight, he knocked out Daniel Cormier in the third round in what would later be ruled a no contest due to Jones testing positive for trace amounts of turinabol. As for Alexander Gustafsson, he wowed fans in the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, sending his countrymen home with a smile on their faces after watching Gustafsson dole out a dazzling knockout to Glover Teixeira in the evening’s main event.
But both of those fights were in 2017. The idea of Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson making their 2018 debuts at the year-end UFC event is a big deal, right? And the fact that they are doing it against one another in a rematch of what many believe to be the greatest fight in UFC history clearly makes it a much, much bigger deal, yes? Well, not if you ask one half of Saturday’s main event:
“This is my comfort zone,” Jones said of Saturday’s main event on the UFC 232 conference call. “High-level fights is my comfort zone. Championship fights is my comfort zone. Five-round fights is my comfort zone. Fighting the baddest dude in the world is my comfort zone. I’ve been doing this shit since I was 23 years old. And it’s always been exactly the same: with a hand raised.
“Another day at the office. No fight’s a big fight. It’s just another fight. This is what I do. This is what God put me on this planet to do.”
What do you make of Jon Jones believing that no fight is a big for him?
