Joe Rogan still can’t wrap his head around the fact that Jon Jones doesn’t train between fights.
After building an iconic career inside the Octagon over the last 16 years, ‘Bones’ finally decided to hang up his gloves, relinquishing the UFC heavyweight championship and riding off into the sunset as the undisputed GOAT of mixed martial arts.
Though he retires with an undefeated record (depending on who you talk to), Jones’ career was filled with ups and downs — most of them related to run-ins with the law. But perhaps the most bizarre thing was the fact that Jon Jones never trained unless he had a fight scheduled.
It’s not an entirely uncommon practice among fighters, but it’s especially unusual for a fighter like Jones, who delivered a string of dominant performances for nearly two decades.
“Jon Jones said he needed six months to prepare for Aspinall if he’s going to fight Aspinall. So they were trying to make a deal, and then he decided to retire. But it’s six months because he’s not training at all. Like, he just doesn’t train in between fights—just doesn’t train. Which, to me, he used to do that a lot when he was younger, too, which I always thought was crazy. That is crazy to me,” Rogan said of Jones’ training routine during a recent episode of his JRE podcast.
“I always saw guys do that, like when I was in my 20s, and I would watch these really big fighters just not train unless it was a training camp time, and I’d be like, ‘I’m never being that way.’ I don’t know, man, that’s like a really weird one to me, but I don’t want to bash it too bad because I do know a lot of guys that do do that,”
“But look at Jon—greatest of all time. It’s like, how did he do that? Really talented. I don’t know how that works. I want it to make sense in my head that like, the harder you work, the more you’ll get from it, which is like true to an extent, but then you have these weird outlier guys that maybe have something more figured out than me that I don’t have figured out.”
Jon Jones’ Retirement gives the heavyweight division a new lease on life
With Jones officially retired, the heavyweight division can finally move forward under the rule of a new king — Tom Aspinall.
Earlier this year, Aspinall became the longest-reigning interim champion in UFC history as he continued to sit back and wait for Jones to either sign on the dotted line or step away. Now that ‘Bones’ is out of the picture, Aspinall has assumed the throne and intends to be an active champion after the last two titleholders — ‘Bones’ and Francis Ngannou — practically held the division hostage for four years.
First up for Aspinall? Perhaps a long-rumored showdown with ‘Bon Gamin.’
