Instigator / Pro
14
1523
rating
4
debates
75.0%
won
Topic
#6375
Jon Jones is the greatest UFC fighter of all time.
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
0
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
0
After 2 votes and with 8 points ahead, the winner is...
Lunatic
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Rated
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
- Minimal rating
- None
Contender / Con
6
1600
rating
214
debates
55.14%
won
Description
This topic has been widely debated among UFC fans for quite some time. Let's face it, Jon Jones isn't the most popular man after having the media capture several of his out of the cage interactions with police and the public. That combined with accusations of steroid use, and general dislike for the man, many people have taken to the idea that his "in the cage accomplishments" are not as impactful as they actually are. UFC president Dana White has consistently stated in press conferences that Jon Jones is the greatest ufc fighter of all time, and constantly gets flack from Jon Jones haters about this. I would like to defend the notion that Jones is indeed the best fighter the UFC has ever seen.
To set up some framework for this debate, I would like to emphasize the following guidelines to anyone looking to take this on.
1. We are focusing on the UFC as the sole MMA organization for this discussion. This keeps the waters less muddied, as it's always argued which organizations house the better competition. While the UFC tends to adopt a lot of these fighters from other organizations with varying success, it simply isn't possible to prove in every scenario that one organization is superior to another, so let's keep this UFC only.
2. Let's not get semantical with this. I am not defending the notion that Jon Jones is the best person in the world, or that people should follow his example. Out of the cage, he has had multiple incidents that causes many people to question his character. Neither me nor my opponent should bring out of cage antics into this debate. This isn't about proving who the better person is, it's about proving who the best fighter in the organization is. Skill =/= Personality.
3. My opponent should offer up a fighter of their own selection, and argue why their fighter is more deserving of the title of "GOAT" than Jon Jones. I will equally share the burden of proving why Jones is better than my opponents pick.
With that said, if you have any questions, I implore you to reach out to me either via pm's or comment section if you have any issues with the resolution or the framework here, so we can iron out the details before acceptance. Otherwise, if you are fine with the resolution as is, feel free to accept any time.
Thankyou, and I wish good luck to whomever ends up being my opponent.
Round 1 is designated to acceptance. I will begin my argument in Round 2, as will my opponent.
Round 1
Pro
#1
R1 is for acceptance, rounds 2-3 will be for debate. Please no new arguments in the final round as I cannot respond to those. Good luck and have fun!
Round 2
Pro
#3
Resolved: Jon Jones is the Greatest UFC fighter of all time.
I am maintaining this position on a baseline of three fundamental key points that I think are key to establishing why someone would be a GOAT in this sport.
Contention 1: Jon Jones has one of the most impressive fighting styles and never provides a boring fight.
Let’s face it, many UFC champions have a tendency throughout the competition's history to coast, and play it safe. There is a lot of hard work and dedication that goes into acquiring a UFC belt and holding it. Fighters like Aljamain Sterling, Leon Edwards, Magomed Ankalaev, and Raquel Pennington were kind of known for doing great work to get the title, but once they got it basically did the bare minimum required in order to hold said title. Some of these fights can be considered snooze fests, where a fighter does everything possible to maintain distance, avoid strikes and generally engaging only in a few scraps here and there in a round in order to maintain a slight advantage over their opponent each round without putting themselves at risk.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s a smart move in general, when you're trying to protect your legacy and career. However there are some fighters that have shown themselves throughout their UFC careers and absolutely refuse to play this game. They do what they need to do to win and more. Fighters like Alexander Volkanovski come to mind, always pushing the pace, never letting a round get away from them. Fighters like Justin Gaethje, Nate Diaz, Robbie Lawler, Michael Chandler come to mind, when you think about fighters who go out on their sword every single fight. They provide entertaining fights that the fans love to watch, but it doesn’t always work out for them in the end. But there is one fighter who can and does consistently provide an entertaining fight while maintaining that perfect record.
Sub A: A grade effort against top level guys
You guessed it, Jon Jones. In his career of 28 fights, over half of them were finishes, with 11 knockouts and 5 submissions.(1) That’s more than half of his fights that don’t even make it to the finish line, and keep in mind this man has been fighting top contenders and champions only since he won the Light Heavy Weight Belt in 2011 against Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. Looking at his fights that do go the distance, it’s rarely ever a close fight. Let’s look at his first fight with Daniel Cormier that went the distance. He almost out struck Cormier by twice his strikes, with the final tally being 92 strikes to Jones, 58 to Cormier (not to mention scoring three takedowns against the guy who was the most feared wrestler in the division at the time). (2)
What's more impressive is that Jones managed to repeat that beating in their second fight still nearly doubling his strikes against Cormier 95-58, and doing it in three rounds instead of 2, when he finished Cormier with a devastating head kick.
He also doubled the strikes against Glover Teixeira (who would later regain the belt when Jon moved up) with 138 strikes to 53.(3)
And then do it again in his 5 round five against Ovince Saint Preux with 105 strikes to 57. (4)
Then he went on to more than quadruple Anthony “Lionheart” Smith’s strikes with a whopping 125-36. (5)
While these fights all went to decision, these are whopping numbers to beat these guys by. Keep in mind these are champion level contenders, meaning they had to work through the top ten in the rest of the division to get to this spot, no easy feat, just to get absolutely shut down by the king every single time.
Jon Jones shut down every single person to challenge him for 9 years 2011-2020, and he not only did it dominantly, he did it in a fashion that never left the viewers bored during a second of his fights. Keep in mind, as a champion you have to stay busy, he fought multiple times in a lot of these years. Jon Jones stayed busy and successful this entire period.
Sub B: Exciting wrestling ground and pound style.
Jon Jones is one of the few fighters that can take it to the ground and keep things interesting. Given the range advantage he has over most of his opponents. Take a look at the Matt Hamill fight. Matt Hamill had just come off of winning The Ultimate Fighter season 3 after knocking out Jesse Forbes in the finale, and was a force to be reckoned with upon entering the UFC after prominent Knockouts over Mark Munoz and Tim Boetsch. During the fight, Jones scores a sweet trip against Hamill in a clinch, and easily moves from side control to full mount, and proceeds to rain absolute punishment on Hamill, resulting in a stoppage. The fight was initially looked at as a loss, for the use of an illegal downward elbow, but thankfully was later overturned to changes in the UFC ruleset after the common misconception that downward elbows were more dangerous than other elbows was proven wrong. Long story short, Hamill was decimated with ground and pound and ended the fight with only landing 5 strikes to Jones’s 44. (6)(7)
Jones has done with with multiple opponents on the ground as well, finishing Brandon Vera (8) in a similar fashion, and even doing so as recently as with his last fight against Stipe Miocic. (9) Jones is one of the few fighters next to legends like Tito Ortiz who knew how to make things interesting while on the ground, instead of just holding and maintaining a position like many wrestlers and jiu-jitsu fighters tend to do when gaining an advantageous position.
The most impressive thing about this is, you don’t see a lot of LHW and HW fighters going to the ground at all, simply because it takes up so much more energy for these big guys to go to the ground. The amount of cardio it takes to constantly get in these positions and maintain them is more difficult than smaller weight classes in general, which is why so many LHW and HW fights are stand up fights that end in knockouts. So when you see someone like Jon Jones get in a position and not just “hold on to it” like so many of the LHW and HW’s do, it's even more impressive when you factor in his ability to maintain striking pressure in these positions.
Contention 2: His resume is more impressive than any other fighter
If you look at the level of competition this man has fought over the years, Jon Jones has fought some of the toughest guys in the sport. There was a point when the light heavyweight division was considered one of the most challenging divisions in the sport purely based on the level of competition there was and the names of the people fighting. Jon Jones dismantled people who have never been dismantled, and he made it look easy.
Sub A: Jon Jones ended careers
Let’s take a look at Shogun. He had just taken huge wins over Alistair Overeem, Mark Coleman, Chuck Lidell, and a stunning KO over Lyoto Machida, who until that point most people had struggled with figuring out his unorthodox style. At this point in time it seemed the UFC was facing someone that would become a prominent stay in as a longstanding UFC Champion. That was until Jones came in and destroyed him with a Knockout in the third round. Prior to Jones, Shogun was only starring in PPV fights and getting big names. After that fight, he went on to take a collection of losses sparsed with the occasional win, but no big names, and mostly fight nights. In fact, 11 of his next fights his next 18 fights were fight nights instead of Pay-Per-Views, and he wasn’t the main event ever again. In fact his only notable wins after that were arguably Little Nog and a past his prime Forrest Griffin. (10)
Let’s look at Rampage next, who was on a tear after just beating Chuck Liddell, Dan Henderson, Wanderlei Silva, Kieth Jardine, Lyoto Machida and Matt Hamill, his only notable loss being to Rashad Evans. His next fight with Jones after getting submitted in the 4th round when he was already losing every single round in the fight prior to that. Rampage lost his next two fights in the UFC and then transferred over to Bellator, where he only fought against no names in MMA until he retired in 2019. (11)
Without overtly drawing out this point, I can draw multiple examples where Jon Jones just ruined the careers of his opponents, including Anthony Smith, Alexander Gustafsson, and Dominick Reyes as other prominent examples. People who fight Jon Jones are never the same afterwards,
Contention 3: Continued success after a weight jump
My last point here will be talking and focusing on his most recent success. After a 3 year break from the UFC, Jones promised a return to the heavyweight division. Moving up a weight class has notoriously resulted in a bigger challenge for fighters, such as Max Holloway who tried it and immediately lost to Poirier, or Volkanovski who tried it and lost against Makachev. When you're used to fighting at a certain weight for so long, you get familiar and comfortable at that weight. When Jones was set to fight Ciryl Gane, early betting odds in January had Jones as a +130 Underdog against Gane, based on uncertainty around the weight jump and his prolonged time off. (12)
While these odds later ended up changing to giving Jon a slight boost, it was clear that people were uncertain about how he would perform against Gane who was not only knocking out most of his opponents showing dominant punching power, but also had displayed great wrestling ability and cardio against his recent opponent. Jones came in and submitted him with a standing guillotine in round 1, (the same choke he used against Machida in 2011) he shook the world. Jones winning wasn’t out of the question, but winning so dominantly after just moving up an unfamiliar weight class, is pretty damn impressive. He then went on to finish Stipe Miocic, who was arguably one of the best strikers in the heavy weight division, even boasting wins over Daniel Cormier and Francis Ngannou. (13)
Conclusion:
Having a perfect record is one thing. There are a few fighters that can boast one, take Khabib Nurmagomedov for example. But you look at Khabib’s record, and he really didn’t fight anyone prominent 5 fights, and even then he didn’t defend his belt more than 4 times before retiring. His entire UFC career lasted only a brief 8 years. Jon Jones has been fighting top level competition for 14 years, and not just winning, but dominating in most cases against some of the most talented people in the sport. He not only maintained that 0 loss on his record, he did it in a spectacular fashion that never left the viewers bored or unsatisfied. Seriously, find me a Jones fight that wasn’t entertaining to watch the whole way through. Even his close fights with Reyes and Gustafson were absolutely wild to watch, and created long lasting memories for fans around the world. Jon Jones is the GOAT and has nothing to prove to anyone, he’s done it all. With his reputation he deserves GOAT status alongside Tyson and Ali for boxing. While there are contenders for this position in the future, it is my opinion that there isn’t a better resume out there than Jon Jones at this current time.
“And still…”
I look forward to hearing my opponent's response.
Sources:
- http://ufcstats.com/fighter-details/07f72a2a7591b409
- http://ufcstats.com/fight-details/57385188587c83b9
- http://ufcstats.com/fight-details/e332aec001b34f50
- http://ufcstats.com/fight-details/05c8aeb2806be99c
- http://ufcstats.com/fight-details/5b9f545890407976
- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i7kzLG86MIU
- http://ufcstats.com/event-details/91d73ee59347ac16
- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VVed2EsLl-E
- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B637Wkuu4ZY
- https://www.espn.com/mma/fighter/history/_/id/2335514/mauricio-rua
- https://www.espn.com/mma/fighter/history/_/id/2335470/quinton-jackson
- https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/story/sports/ufc/2023/01/15/ufc-285-opening-odds-jon-jones-slight-underdog-vs-ciryl-gane/81001873007/
- http://ufcstats.com/fighter-details/d28dee5c705991df
Con
#4
Evaluating skill for fighters gets tricky because the physics for performance operate differently for each weight class. Lighter fighters are usually quicker, agile, and more explosive. Certain moves like a high spinning round-kick can be done more efficiently and with more finesse from a smaller fighter because their bodyweight doesn't impede their flexibility, whereas a larger fighter's mass gets in the way, making certain attacks impossible. Which redefines the boundaries and limitations of fighting styles for larger fighters versus smaller fighters, as it's an entirely separate game.
Lighter fighters are also more susceptible to injury and have shorter careers, heavier fighters have significantly less stamina and have boring fights, but have longer careers.
So if I am to argue that a featherweight is more skilled than Jon Jones, comparing the technical expertise would be difficult. As the rules are different. It's like arguing that a european longsword fencer is the better swordsman than a competitive kendo practictioner.
Therefore, the greatest fighter of all time can only be decided by the best fighters of each weight class, and which of those best fighters has the widest skill-gap between all of the other competitors in that class.
Based on this, I am arguing that The GOAT is none other than Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Khabib has the best record.
Khabib has managed to secure 29 victories without ever losing a fight and retired peacefully. That puts him in the record of being one of the greatest fighters of all time. If one is winning constantly, but not even using 100% of their maximum fighting capacity, that suggests a level of mastery which transcends the achievements made by other fighters, and sets the bar too high for anyone else to live up to. In his fight against Justin, Khabib could have easily snapped his opponent's leg to end it, which would have ended the other's career. But Khabib instead decided to show mercy and spare Justin, going instead for a triangle choke and still won.
Khabib is a pacifist who regularly shows mercy to his opponents. The most skilled fighter is therefore not the most impressive or flashiest, but one that can subdue his enemies without exhausting his full arsenal of abilities.
Afterall, the supreme art of warfare is subduing the enemy without fighting.
Grappling is also ridiculously OP. Sambo is amongst one of the most dominant grappling sports, and Khabib is its most devoted practitioner. He trained from youth by wrestling bears, which gave him a solid foundation of the mechanics. This is how he grew and evolved to be the sport's ultimate legend.
Round 3
Pro
#5
While Khabib is certainly a decent fighter, I feel he is a long shot away from being anywhere close to the GOAT. We will break it down, but first let’s dissect a few of my opponents' arguments about weight classes.
My opponent says that lighter opponents are quicker and more agile, and uses the spinning high kick as an example of what a lighter fighter can do. However, in Jon Jones most recent fight he also pulled the same move my opponent talks about, a spinning high kick, which completely cripples Stipe Miocic, enabling Jones to finish him with devastating ground and pound via TKO. (1)
The high kick was also what enables him to finish Cormier in their second fight as Cormier prepares to shoot for a takedown. (2)
Of Khabib’s two TKO victories against Tavares and Horcher, neither were enabled by a high kick, so this point actually doesn’t give tons of credit for my opponent's fighter.
Secondly my opponent mentions that heavier weight classes have more boring fights. While this is true in some circumstances, I highlighted in great detail how Jones was an exception to this stigma, by showing examples of some of his most impressive victories and exciting fights. In fact I would argue that Jones doesn’t have a single boring fight in his entire UFC career. I personally have never watched a boring Jones fight, even his 5 round decision victories have had some gnarly back and forth rounds. Look at fights of his like Gustafsson 1, or his Dominick Reyes fight. You can’t tell me a fan watching those live shows weren't at the edge of their seats the entire fight.
My opponent's next point highlights Khabib having the best record. But that isn’t exactly true, as both fighters have 29 wins and 0 losses. While its true one of Jones fights was turned into a no contest based on outdated Usada rules that were later changed, his second win over Cormier was 100% a legit win. Now why Jones' reputation is more important is that he fought significantly better fighters than Khabib did on his title run. In fact only 13 of Khabibs 29 wins were even in the UFC(3), and of those 13 wins, most were absolutely no names. His first serious opponent was probably Edson Barboza right before he got his title run, and after that he defended his belt against the only 5 names that are memorable on that list. None of which were ever champions after Khabib took the belt. That’s not to disrespect, Porier, Gaethje, McGregor or LaQuinta, but lets face it, after Khabib retired, they had multiple shots at the belt, and none were able to secure it. Let’s compare that to Jones. Of Jones 29 fights, 24 were in the UFC (4), of those 24 fights 17 of those were title defenses. Jones' record has almost 5 times the number of contenders that Khabib has, one of which was Glover Teixeira who was able to later reclaim the LHW belt after Jones moved to heavyweight, something none of Khabib's former opponents were capable of.
My opponent also mentions Khabib’s mercy being a factor in his greatness. While this point is kind of hard to substantiate, I think it’s blatantly wrong. For example, he and Conor McGregor absolutely hated each other. And while Khabib dominated the fight, there wasn’t a significant gap in the strikes by the end of the fight with McGregor having 51 to khabibs 70 (certainly not like Jones who nearly doubled many of his opponents strikes, as I mentioned in my opening round). (5) Was Khabib really being “merciful” to Mcgregor who had disrespected his religion, team, and multiple other aspects of Khabib's culture? (6) Khabib had no reason to show him mercy, and while the fight ended in the 4th round via finish, the fact that McGregor lasted that long shows that McGregor was giving him a hard enough time, as opposed to being finished much earlier than that.
However even if we were to grant this point, and say Khabib was the “Oh so merciful” fighter, why does that cement his greatness over Jones' more cold and ruthless style? Jones was intimidating in the cage, because for him every fight felt like life or death. You get the feeling when watching Jones, that if there was no cage and no referee, Jones could legitimately kill his opponent with his bare hands. You see a prime example of this when he choked Lyoto Machida out against the cage and walked off ruthlessly. Machida who was a huge threat to the division and presented problems with his unorthodox fighting style, evasiveness, and knock out power, was easily left unconscious by Jones who appeared to not even break a sweat. Seeing that live gave me the absolute chills, and I am sure it had a similar effect on most fans at the time. (7)
When I think of a fighter and the intimidation factor, would I rather be stuck in a cage with merciful Khabib, who might let me almost compete with him for 4 rounds despite insulting everything he stands for and believes in vs the guy who just put out some of the best people in the world and made it look easy? There’s a chance I die fighting Jones, not as much with Khabib. And if one is more intimidating on so many different factors than the other, how can we argue that Khabib even reaches that same GOAT status?
To summarize:
My original contentions stand, Jones has not only the better record, more entertaining fights, and ability to perform and show out at multiple weight classes, he also didn’t retire after only 5 championship defenses like Khabib did. Jones' resume is extremely diverse with some of the scariest and baddest dudes on the planet under his belt, while 90% of Khabib's wins are over relative “nobodies”. Khabib loses the GOAT battle with so many factors simply because he chose to retire too early. We unfortunately will never know if he truly was GOAT material because he retired only two years after gaining his belt. Jones didn’t retire until recently, and has a whopping 17 title defenses. I just don’t see how Khabib even comes close here, even with his perfect record. There are plenty of fighters who have perfect records that are champions and are still active and fighting. I’d almost say Makachev is more deserving of the GOAT title than Khabib, given his more impressive resume. Even Ilia Topuria has 0 losses on his record and has a better reputation than Khabib. While Khabib is no doubt a talented fighter, I think he is still very far from even being in the discussion for GOAT status.
Sources:
Round 4
Pro
#7
It’s unfortunate my opponent was unable to make the last round. I believe I have said enough about Jones however to justify he is indeed the GOAT. Good luck to my opponent in the voting period!
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:
I will award conduct to Pro for Con's forfeits.
R1P: Pro has a great opener. The big point that stood out to me was the domination in fights that went the distance; doubling your opponent's strikes against a champion (Texiera) in his prime is impressive. Of course, the list of names he defeated is impressive.
The ending of careers, impressive fighting style, and success after a weight jump are all nice points that add to the case.
R1C: Con goes for some level semantics to define greatness as domination within one's weight class. I think it's a fair definition since the styles for fighters in each weight class are different. However, it's a massive blunder since Pro had just pointed out how Jones remained dominant despite moving up to a heavier weight class. If dominance in one class is impressive, how much more impressive is dominance while moving up and down?
His other main argument was Khabib was merciful, arguing that he could afford to step off the gas a little bit because he was more dominant.
R2P: On Con's first point, pro successfully demonstrates that the quality of opponents Jones had to face was far better- thus, Jones's undefeated record was more impressive than Khabib's.
On Con's other point, Pro counters with the idea that a more intimidating reputation is more deserving. I think this point is very subjective.
From there, Con forfeits every round. I don't know where Con had a chance, but he never argued against Jones' quality of opponents, fighting style, or the idea that intimidation is more important than mercy.
I think the big clincher here is that even if I grant everything to Con here, he has no way around the fact that Jones has a more impressive list of names taken. Therefore, as Pro argued, Jones's dominance will always be more impressive than Khabib's dominance.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:
Pro's case is just significantly stronger. He sets up a much longer and more detailed examination of Jon Jones as a fighter, providing not just a set of moves that he uses and ways he entertains the crowd, but a timeline of events that showcases his sustained capabilities over time and how those make him a great fighter. By contrast, Con relies mainly on the win record for Khabib Nurmagomedov, which as Pro points out, is basically identical in terms of numbers. He does have some other points about Khabib's performance, but none of them come with comparisons to Jon Jones and many of those points are basically just theorizing about what could have happened in Khabib's fights or about how in control he appeared. Absent Pro's arguments or with some responses to Pro's case, those might have held some merit, but Pro lays out a much more objective set of measures for what works in Jon Jones's favor and effectively rebuts all of Con's case. Hence, I give him the win.
Conduct to Pro as well for the two round forfeit.
Its long standing, he's always got a new reason to think i'm hitler. The latest one is for getting him lynched in a mafia game. I am super evil because of that.
What happened?
Do you and AR have beef?
Thats quite a slippery slope from the guy who claims to be abused because he gets voted off in a mafia game. lol
It could be true, however based on data you have on me you have concluded that and decided to disseminate that a wife beater with barely any morals who is known to abuse steroids and use any dirty trick in the book to brutalise opponents is a better person than I am.
Then you clearly prioritise superficial success or might is right mentality. By that definition everyone on here is either inferior to him as a person by your logic or they are hiding their success and prowess.
Meant to say rounds 2-4 will be for debate. lol
Yeah he’s still a better person than you AR lol
Truism. Good luck to con lol
If I knew more than Jack shit about UFC I’d consider accepting… I love a good GOAT debate
Still Jordan ;)
He clarified this in the description…
What a conscience to glorify a man like that. Sociopathic wife beater...
Welcome to UFC.
I named myself Bones because I was a huge fan of Jon several years back but now I despise him. I'm interested in the debate but idk who would possibly be able to adjudicate the debate.
Would've liked to see that aspinal fight tho.