Gable Steveson is set to make his UFC debut and is ready to make an impact \u2014 especially with Jon Jones by his side.<\/p>\n
The Olympic gold medalist faces Elisha Ellison at UFC 329 in his inaugural walk to the octagon. A protege of former two-division champ and all-time great Jon Jones, Steveson understands the impact that comes with having someone like Jones on his side. In fact, you can argue Jones has been more excited for Steveson\u2019s MMA future than he was for his own career.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got high hopes for me,\u201d Steveson told MMA Fighting. \u201cI think he kind of sees his skill set, and kind of sees what I can do with his skill set and how I can kind of manage who Jon Jones was, and be the athlete that he was also. So I think that\u2019s why he\u2019s so giddy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s excited to watch someone compete who he has bestowed his power on, and so it\u2019s neat to see, but it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steveson is 3-0 with three first-round finishes in his young MMA career, and also holds a 15 second knockout win in his lone appearance for Dirty Boxing. In his most recent competitive venture, Steveson made a successful return to the wrestling mat with a tech fall win against former UFC fighter Alexandr Romanov at RAF 9 in May.<\/p>\n
Not only is Jones a pivotal presence for Steveson as he competes, the 26-year-old hopes \u201cBones\u201d being octagon side will create some different emotions for his opponents as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a big thing to have Jon Jones in my corner,\u201d Steveson explained. It\u2019s a big confidence booster. And if you look when we walk out and Jon walks out, the opponents are going to look at Jon and be like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s the greatest of all time in the corner of Gable Steveson showing him what to do. What is Gable Steveson possibly going to do to me that Jon has taught him.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s a huge confidence boost and, hopefully, when he walks out, the opponents get a little more scared as the time goes on because Jon\u2019s in the corner watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones retired from the sport and vacated his heavyweight title, which is now held by Tom Aspinall. With the announcement of UFC White House, Jones was hoping to get another chance to hone his skills in the octagon but the UFC elected not to put him on the card.<\/p>\n
Now that Steveson is in the UFC, could Jones return to action, and, perhaps, share a card with the surging heavyweight prospect?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it would be really cool if he fought again, but Jon\u2019s going to do whatever Jon wants to do, and if he wants to fight again, he\u2019ll fight again, but we\u2019ll see,\u201d Steveson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gable Steveson is set to make his UFC debut and is ready to make an impact \u2014 especially…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":["post-794010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794010","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=794010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}