When UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones walks out to the octagon to face arch nemesis Daniel Cormier in the pay-per-view (PPV) main event of UFC 182 this Saturday night (January 3, 2015), he’ll be on the lookout for an historic and record-extending eighth straight 205-pound title defense.
But the stakes are much higher than that, as Jones and Cormier have an extreme amount of bad blood between them, stemming from their first-ever meeting to their long-held Twitter battles and culminating in their now-infamous UFC 178 Media Day brawl last August.
The brawl became an instant sensation and made the fight by far the most anticipated MMA bout of 2014, one that unfortunately fell apart when “Bones” required surgery for a torn meniscus and delayed it until now.
Jones has made his disdain for Cormier very well known, going as far to state that he would “kill” him if he indeed spit in his face as he had promised on their telling “hot mic” session that saw a side of “Bones” that Cormier insisted was the real champ all along.
It appears that Jones is finally settling into the bad guy role that he has seemingly been made for all along, and that’s giving this bout the massive hype and buildup that we just haven’t seen all that much during the injury plagued 2014.
Yet for all of Jones’ talk, the champ will be tasked with what could be his toughest-ever challenge in the octagon, and he’s faced and defeated a laundry list of elite 205-pound talent.
Undefeated at 15-0, Cormier is hell-bent on becoming UFC champ after he fell just short in the Olympics and the NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships.
That, coupled with his more-than-impressive skillset, could most definitely make Cormier the first man to defeat Jones in the UFC.
Let’s take a good look at the reasons why.