{"id":774318,"date":"2026-07-02T13:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774318\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:09:21","slug":"jones-humble-honest-topuria-in-a-good-position-to-return-to-top-of-ufc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774318\/","title":{"rendered":"Jones: \u2018Humble, honest\u2019 Topuria in a good position to return to top of UFC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Jones doesn\u2019t have much experience with losing fights, but he shared his thoughts on the subject of Ilia Topuria\u2019s recent loss to Justin Gaethje<\/a> and what the Spanish-Georgian fighter will need to do to come back in top form.<\/p>\n

Jones was in Russia to host an IBA Bare Knuckle boxing event and took the time to speak to Red Corner MMA about a number of topics. He gave more context<\/a> to his comments about Alex Pereira that caused a bit of drama<\/a> between the two. And he shared a positive outlook for Ilia Topuria following \u201cEl Matador\u2019s\u201d first loss in the cage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you become a UFC champion, you become more famous right away,\u201d Jones said on the challenges of remaining at the top. \u201cYou get invited to dinner, there\u2019s the girls, there\u2019s the money, there\u2019s all these new friends. There\u2019s just so much that gets thrown at you. And if you\u2019re not grounded enough, if you don\u2019t have a strong enough circle and team, it\u2019s easy to just get distracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I have fallen victim to all the things that a young athlete can, the partying and getting in trouble, all of it. But in my situation, I had a team that always held me to a high standard, and they never allowed me to get discouraged by my downfalls, and they always encouraged me to just keep moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIlia, he\u2019s gonna be in a good position,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe has faith. He has a strong team. And that\u2019s what it takes. He has a work ethic. I think he\u2019s honest with himself. Ilia and I, we share the same agent, and we were talking about him earlier today. And what I heard was that he\u2019s humble, that he is honest. He realized that he just didn\u2019t perform well, and I think that\u2019s the number one step of getting back into the ring in a healthy way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the guys that make excuses, that\u2019s when it\u2019s hard to come back and win that rematch. Guys who just say, \u2018You know what? I could\u2019ve did better, I could\u2019ve done more.\u2019 Honesty with yourself is is the key to MMA. Knowing exactly who you are, what you\u2019ve done, what you haven\u2019t done. You can\u2019t lie once you get in that cage. What\u2019s real will come to the light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Topuria hasn\u2019t said much but others have done some speaking for him. Fellow Georgian fighter Merab Dvalishvili blamed eye pokes for blinding Topuria early,<\/a> and upon closer inspection there was at least one thumb that hit Topuria\u2019s eye. But it\u2019s hard to deny that Topuria fought a sloppy fight compared to how he has competed in the past. To speed things up and make his first round prediction come through, he seemed willing to take a punch to land two of his own. By round two, the damage from those punches was taking its toll.<\/p>\n

Whether Topuria was impatient, prideful, distracted, he\u2019ll have a chance to learn from his mistakes once the bones in his face heal. We\u2019ll see if Jon Jones is right and he makes honest fixes to the mistakes that led to losing his undefeated status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jon Jones doesn\u2019t have much experience with losing fights, but he shared his thoughts on the subject of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-774318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}