Jon Jones’ knockout victory over Daniel Cormier at UFC 214 was impressive considering the UFC light heavyweight champion hadn’t fought in over a year and hadn’t finished a fight since 2013.
But the performance is even more remarkable if you believe his coach Mike Winkeljohn’s revelation about an arm injury Jones suffered days before the fight.
“A couple of nights before the fight, he couldn’t lift his arm. He had hurt it wrestling,” Winkeljohn explained to Submission Radio, as transcribed by MMAFighting.com. “He wrestled a little too hard with his partner and maybe from a lack of warm up, I’m not sure, but it was kind scary.”
This could possibly explain why Jones didn’t perform during open workouts two days before fight night. Winkeljohn went on to say that Jones wasn’t too communicative about the pain and the coach was concerned about how Jones would fight if he needed to make any adjustments.
“You know, in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Are you going to be able to underhook with that arm? Or if not, you have to use a lot more frames and more downward pressure and circle the opposite direction, so game plan might have to be changed a little bit if it doesn’t get healed. So there’s a lot of things that are going through the coaches’ minds. Who knows what was going through Jon’s mind. He basically didn’t say anything other than he’s fighting.”
And the way Jones fought, no one would’ve been able to tell he wasn’t able to lift his arm just two days before the dominant win.
Thumbnail photo via Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports Images
