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Originally Posted by Onlydo2days
How good can his wrestling really be at this point? He didn't use it vs Santos or Reyes and when he tried he got stuffed with ease. Wrestling fades/atrophies over time if you don't work on it and he doesn't.
I feel like Gane can drill down TDD similar to how Ngannou drilled down TDD and turn this into a standup fight, perhaps fairly easily.
We just haven't seen that Jones in a long, long time and I feel like the history of old guy saying "I'm gonna use my wrestling that I haven't used in awhile in this fight" never really works. DC talked that up a lot before his 3rd fight with Stipe as well.
You can't just drill takedown defense and stop a better wrestler from taking you down. It's more like chess where one move leads to another move which leads to another move and if you're a lower rated chess player you probably aren't going to win that battle.
He did utilize wrestling vs Reyes, although with very limited success. His wrestling skills are mostly contingent on how much he's been training wrestling, rather than how much he's utilized it in a fight. Of course, it's hard to expect a leopard to change its spots and Jon Jones became quite accustomed to just participating in kickboxing-style contests.
It's very clear that Jon Jones stagnated significantly while at Jackson-Winklejohn. Getting booted from that camp is the best thing that could have possibly happened for him to improve as a fighter. Whether his new team is any better and whether he can overcome years of stagnation is yet to be seen. I'm not sure where all he's been training but I do know in late 2021 he was training at Fight Ready in Arizona and there is video of him wrestling with an Olympic Bronze medalist. That's the sort of camp I'd like to see Jones training at full-time tbh, rather than with some podunk team in ABQ.