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UFC Legend Jon Jones Explains Why He Never Makes Eye Contact with Opponents at Face-Offs

Souvik Roy
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UFC Legend Jon Jones Explains Why He Never Makes Eye Contact with Opponents at Face-Offs

Most UFC fans may have witnessed a unique feature in the current UFC heavyweight champ, Jon Jones’s, pre-fight weigh-ins. Generally, UFC stars often get into altercations or minor scuffles with their rivals during their face-offs. But ‘Bones’ is way different as he chooses not to look into his rival’s eyes even at the time of his stare down. Recently, an Instagram page named, ‘Fight Spotted’ put out a video questioning why Jones does this. Their question also got answered in the comments section by none other than ‘Bones’ himself.

Despite Bones’ unique characteristic feature, it’s not that he never had any untoward incident during his pre-fight. It was probably him who had the worst scuffle in the history of UFC pre-fight events. Most fans may remember the intense brawl that broke out between him and the noted Daniel Cormier at the stage of the pre-UFC 178 face-offs.

But Jones has been pretty vigilant towards maintaining his ‘no eye-contact’ rule in all of his other face-offs. The caption to ‘Fight Spotted’s’ post asked for an answer to why he does it. It read,

“The whole MMA community wants to know @jonnybones”

 

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A post shared by Fight Spotted (@fightspotted)

Tagging Jones in the caption worked well for ‘Fight Spotted’. The 36-year-old answered the question, mentioning,

“Bc It’s not anything personal, they’re all amazing characters in my story.”

‘Bones’s’ answer also hints at the fact that the respect that he has towards his rivals is also one of the reasons behind not looking into their eyes. However, not only does he give respect but also demands it. Recently, he taught this to the current interim heavyweight champ, Tom Aspinall.

Jon Jones removed Tom Aspinall’s hand from his shoulder

Most fans may be already aware of the recent feud between the undisputed and interim heavyweight champs Jones and Aspinall. While Aspinall constantly called out Bones for the match, Jon Jones hit back at him by saying that the interim champion has an “inflated ego”. Amidst the constant to and fro, these two recently met up at a sports event. During the chit-chat in the meeting, Aspinall casually placed his hand on Jones’s shoulder.

However, the latter wasn’t pretty comfortable with this act as he removed Aspinall’s hand politely. The Rochester native may have perceived that the British heavyweight was trying to belittle him by this action and hence removed his hand.

Aspinall may have clarified later that he didn’t mean to belittle or disrespect Jones by that act. But the thought process that made Jones remove his hand may be quite apparent to the fans.

Post Edited By:Debmallya Chakraborty

About the author

Souvik Roy

Souvik Roy

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The coveted boxing bout between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson in 2002 was the first combat sports event that Souvik ever witnessed. However, he fell for the UFC when he knew about it in 2010. After starting as an occasional viewer back then, Souvik has been watching UFC events almost regularly from late 2017. He began his career as a UFC(MMA) and combat sports journalist in the year 2022 after gathering a lot of valuable knowledge about MMA and a few other combat sports disciplines. He has written more than 1300 articles about various UFC and other combat sports events prior to joining The SportsRush. Apart from being a journalist, Souvik is also an ardent fan of the UFC. Hence, he always looks to have conversations about the same with others. He has a deep affinity for striking part of MMA and other combat sports and Dustin ‘The Diamond’ Poirier is the warrior of his choice in the current UFC roster. Souvik also serves as the Lead Vocalist of a rock band during his time free from publishing reports.

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