John Jones becomes the youngest UFC champion: MMA history today

(Editor’s note: This story was originally released on March 19, 2018.)

If you want to tell the story of John Jones when he became the youngest champion in UFC history, you have to start with a dog. The name was BJ, a seven-month German shepherd mix, and was a somewhat recent acquisition when Jones appeared in Newark, New Jersey, due to a crack in Mauricio Rua’s UFC light heavyweight title on March 19, 2011.

The kind of places Jones was going to that week – a flashy hotel, a TV set, a hotel ballroom converted to UFC workout spaces – is probably not the kind of place you’re supposed to take your dog with you.

Still, he is in the lobby of Penn Station Hilton on St. Patrick’s Day, smiling like a man who dodged fans and drunks, led this dog onto the leash and enjoys the extra privilege of becoming a star, and is sure no one will tell him he can’t take the dog here.

But at the time, the entire star was still new to Jones. He was only 23 years old, and in a sport that was excluded from his professional debut in less than three years, he was now on the cliffs of conquest, with teammate injuries opening the final door.

It was a whirlwind for Jones for a few months. In February, he briefly dispatched Ryan Bader through a second round submission at the UFC 126 undercard. He still won the cage when UFC commentator Joe Rogan told him the news. When Rashad Evans escaped from the title fight with champion Shogun Rua, the UFC wanted Jones to step in a month.

That worked well by Jones. It appears that Jones even sees the misfortune of his teammates as another inevitable step in God’s plan to put the UFC title on his back. It all went just as well as was envisaged, and the MMA genius who cried out biblical verse after his easy victory couldn’t be happy about it.

But for the light heavyweight duo of Jones and Evans, this was the beginning of the end and the first sign of a fracture that quickly led to splitting.

Since Jones first came to Jackson Wink MMA gym, former champion Evans has been the top man in the light heavyweights, but these enduring questions have been nibbling on both. Will they fight each other one day? Was that inevitable as Jones rose in the ranks and Evans was constantly hanging out at or near the top?

Evans took on the role of mentoring. His advice to young Jones: Don’t even entertain those questions. Don’t start talking about it. It shut down before it started, as Evans did with longtime friend and training partner Keith Jardin. I refuse to discuss it as a hypothesis.

Jones listened for a while. However, it soon became increasingly clear that he was not satisfied with the role of a student for a very long time. He considered himself a champion – and soon. When a knee injury took a title shot of Evans to Jones, it seemed to confirm to him that he was a special fighter and a chosen fighter. All he had to do was show up in Newark and beat a man who had studied and grown up watching the fight.

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Jon Jones at UFC 128 Weighing.

But even so, the champion must say that he was not the man he used to be. It was cruel to the “General.” Six years ago, he won two fights in one night, knocking out both Alistair Overyem and Ricardo Aronna to win the Pride FC Middleweight Grand Prix in the final conflict in 2005.

Rua bouncing off his injuries and struggled to regain his previous form, losing his UFC debut to Forrest Griffin in 2007, then barely beating Mark Coleman with the performances that both men spent wearing and wearing. However, the 2009 win knocked out by Fadechuk Liddell helped him get back on track, and after losing a controversial decision against then-champion Ryotomasida, Rea rebounded with his first round knockout victory in Rematch.

Still, Rua was 29 when he first showed up to protect his belt. Evans would have been a hard enough test, but Jones? He was bigger, stronger, faster and younger. Before the fight, the young challenger boasted about his fresh, injury-free body. He jumped up into the air and could do a cart wheel if he felt that way, and unlike the champion, his joints didn’t squeal like the old ship was clogged with ice. Isn’t that good?

“You thought “Shogun” was cool when you were younger because he was a 23-year-old Pride Champion. He loves Jose Aldo because he is a 23-year-old UFC champion,” Jones said before the match. “I’m afraid of that.

Jon Jones was the “General” Rua before the battle at UFC 128.

The event was set for Newark, primarily because it was as close to New York City as the UFC could get at the time. The sport was not legal or regulated in the Imperial state until 2016, but the Prudential Centre was quickly on the train for about 8 million residents of five districts that must be sufficient for now.

At the same time, it was impossible not to realize that this was not exactly Manhattan. Earlier this week, UFC officials reminded the fighters that Newark probably wasn’t the city they wanted to wander alone at night, even if they were professional tough people. To solidify that point, Jones finds the day of the battle by chasing and arresting a man who said he saw him break into a parked car to steal GPS.

As if the young challenger still had enough Superman vibe, he was now fighting crime on the same day he was going to fight for the title. That was not an exact forewarned for the RUA.

The signs of illness were passed down to the battle itself. Rua seemed solid and focused that night, and although he seemed more clearly focused than his early UFC fights, it only took Jones a few seconds to remind him that there was a huge gap between them in terms of athleticism and pure youthful vibrancy.

After a temporary touch-up in the middle of the cage, Jones jumped his knee and slammed Rua against his body, then retreated, extending from one side of the cage to the other, stretching several quick kicks to show range. Within 30 seconds of the start of the battle, Jones mixed the wild spinning attack with a powerful travel takedown. Rua was falling behind and was beginning to look more and more lost.

After applying elbows on the mat for most of the opening round, Rua stepped into the fence and paid the price with a long left hook from Jones, wobbling.

“He’s just going down the path with the ‘General’,” UFC commentator Joe Rogan said after that one-sided first round.

John Jones hits “General” Lua during the battle at UFC 128.

It got worse in the second round, and Jones finally landed the spinning back elbow he was looking for. Rua was bloody, slowed down, struggling to get closer to the whimsical challenger, swinging a wide punch from the outside, staying at distance and tagging it on the left

“My goodness,” UFC commentator Mike Goldberg said just before Jones defeated Lua again and made him a little more brutal on the mat. It was more or less all that had to say about the title fight, which is increasingly similar to the example of elder abuse.

Finally, the third is the end. After being punched and elbowed while choking his back in the early part of the round, a sloppy, battered lua staggered into his leg and retreated towards the fence as Jones closed. The right side of my face was swollen. He struggled deeply and hard as he raised his arms to cover his face.

Jones flies with a left hook to his liver, then kneels on his head. Rua collapses on the mountain and gently slams Matt as the judge Herbdean intervenes to stop it.

“It’s all over!” Goldberg boom. “John Jones is the youngest champion in UFC history!”

Jones slowly walks into the center of the cage, bringing his long arms out to the side of him, then stepping into the cage and sitting before falling onto his back, not knowing what to do next.

“And it wasn’t even a struggle,” Logan said. “Incredibly, the gentleman is he’s the future and he may be the greatest talent he’s seen in the UFC.”

However, as soon as Jones finished crying out his coach and Savior in a postwar interview, the UFC was ready to focus on his next fight. Logan had just finished an interview with Lua, who congratulated Jones on his victory, explaining that “he was better than me.”

“He taught me a lot and I suck on what I have to do,” Jones said when he told him Evans was first in line for his title crack. “But this is my dream.”

After leaving the cage that night, Evans declared himself “did it with Jackson,” officially splitting his team and teammates that had been slowly boiling for weeks.

But for all the drama of that matchup, there will be another year and two title defenses before Jones finally enters the cage together.

By then, Jones was no longer a child whose dreams had come true. Instead, he was the dominant champion and the king of the light heavyweight class. Once Evans and everyone else began to learn, it was Jones himself who could stop him.

For more information about the UFC’s upcoming schedule, please see the UFC rumors section of the site.

“Today’s MMA History” is a Mmajunkie series created in conjunction with Today’s history of MMAa social media outlet dedicated to relive “a daily journey through the history of our sports.”