With Stipe Miocic bowing out of the sport, following a loss against heavyweight champion Jon Jones at UFC 309, Dagestani’s Shamiel Gaziev has made his way to the top 15 heavyweight rankings. And the first thing he’s done is send a cold message to Jones.
Jumping on the “Jon Jone is running away from fights”, bandwagon, the Dagestani fighter has asked the heavyweight champion to “run faster“.
Jones better run faster https://t.co/nw1MQrsC3f
— Shamil Gaziev (@GazievMMA) November 19, 2024
Gaziev is looking to make a comeback after his first loss in the UFC against Jair Rozenstruik at UFC Vegas 87. The wrestler who comes from the legendary school of former lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov’s father, Abdulmanap, has otherwise had a pretty stellar record so far in the UFC.
Of his 13 wins, 10 have come via the way of TKOs and three via submissions. But his last fight against Rozenstruik saw him having to fight for 20 minutes and that was a real problem for the Dagestani. Not only did he look like a fish out of the water, he simply looked unable to compete. The referee actually had to step in and stop that fight from continuing beyond the 4th round.
So, it is indeed a bold move to be calling out Jones of all people. The heavyweight champion has not only never lost a fight, but he is also a master of dominating in the championship rounds when his opponents begin fading away.
Case in point, his first fight against Alexander Gustaffson. Gustaffson not only outwrestled him for the majority of the fight, he practically won the first 3 rounds convincingly. The Swede came so prepared that he stuffed 9 out of 10 takedowns from the then-light heavyweight champ. But that came with a cost of its own.
Gustaffson began to get exhausted at the beginning of the fourth round and was caught square in the face with a spinning elbow. It was all Jones after that. The Rochester native dominated the fight from that point and defended his title successfully, yet another time.
So, Gaziev doesn’t have to worry about Jones right now. He’s quite a bit out of reach. And as far as Jones is concerned, the big man from Dagestan is not a problem either. It’s the big man from England he seems more worried about.
Tom Aspinall finds holes in Jones’ game
Aspinall was seated right next to the cage as the backup fighter when Jones took on Stipe Miocic at UFC 309. By his own admission, this was the first time he watched Jones fight live. And it has him all giddying up.
Of course, I have only seen Jon Jones fighting on TV before; this is the first time that I’ve seen him up close, and I was sitting at arm’s length from the UFC octagon – it is way different watching it on TV than watching it up-close.
Speaking at a post-fight show for TNT, the interim heavyweight champion claimed that there was no way what happened to Miocic could ever happen to him, at least at the hands of a 37-year-old Jones.
He believes Jones’ speed is just not up there and there’s no chance he could beat him.
“Absolutely, I see everything… Whether I can do it in there, you know Jon Jones is arguably the best to ever do it, but I definitely see openings. Whether I can do it myself, I don’t know, but from the outside looking in, I think I can.”
Who do you reckon wins that fight? The GOAT or the man he seems to be running from?
