Two of Jon Jones biggest rivals, Francis Ngannou and Israel Adesanya were both very interested observers on Saturday night when he finally returned to the Octagon to fight Ciryl Gane for the vacant heavyweight title at UFC 285 on Saturday night, and you can see how each reacted to his first round submission victory below.
If things had gone differently it would have been Ngannou who was fighting Jones at the weekend, but after long, protracted negotiations with the UFC over a new deal he was ultimately released earlier this year due to the two sides not being able to reach an agreement, which paved the way for Saturday’s vacant title fight.
And Ngannou was left with his jaw agape as he watched Jones go on to deliver a swift submission win against the man he himself had beaten to defend the title last year.
“I knew that if Jones shows up in a good space mentally, not like in his last two fights, he’s gonna prevail in this fight, but I didn’t see this fight be so short,” Ngannou said on his YouTube channel soon after the fight ended. “I think this fight could have been longer.
“I was surprised though, I was surprised the way that the fight ended. And I think even seeing even Ciryl’s reaction he was surprised as well because he wasn’t even defending, he wasn’t thinking that a submission could come from where he was.
“So that was quite a great performance from Jones. Not very surprising because I knew if that I could outwrestle Ciryl then Jones would be another story. He would have a hard night if Jones lay hands on him.
“But what I did notice was that Jones was rushing. Jon didn’t want to give him space because I think he was afraid of something, maybe of getting exhausted at some point, not be able to grab him. So he was chasing him from the first minute to grab him. It worked out pretty good, but it tells me something, he wasn’t very confident – he was rushing.”
Ngannou then went on to underline the fact that the two stars will likely never have a chance to fight now – a fact that was reinforced at the post-fight press conference when Dana White stated that he’d never take ‘The Predator’ back to the UFC.
“Fun fight. A fight I would have liked to have, but unfortunately we were not there,” Ngannou said. “That fight didn’t happen and probably will never happen now that he’s on a very long contract with the UFC, so that’s not happening anymore.”
Meanwhile, former middleweight champion Israel Adesanya appeared at one point to be on a collision course with Jones before he vacated the 205lb title and moved up to heavyweight, and he too was left stunned by how his comeback fight went down.
“I wanted to see more, but f*ck that’s impressive,” Adesanya acknowledged on his YouTube channel after having been left with his jaw hanging open in a similar fashion to Ngannou at the swift and unexpected nature of Jones guillotine choke finish just over two minutes into the opening round.
“The way he did it, easily – that was shocking,” he added.
