Joe Rogan Breaksdown Jon Jones vs. Dominick Reyes w/Rashad Evans

Like for instance, when John Jones was first competing, John Jones, he competed so freely because, you know, it was just like he was, it was just in his nature, like he was just so creative and he fought different because of, you know, he fought from that place of just creativity, that ignorance, that ignorant bliss, you know. He couldn't be beat. He didn't believe he can be beat. And, you know, he would fight that way and he would do some genius stuff in there just because of that, you know. But then when you have those experiences where you, you know, you've been caught in a fight or you've, you know, you've made some mistakes in there, then you do know better. But then those, those, those thoughts, it actually slows you down a bit too because you're not fully reacting. You're, you're thinking of a hair where before it was just kind of like a reaction. Yeah, I talk about his opening fight, the opening sequence of his fight with Shogun. I mean, he's 23 years old, he's fighting for the world title and he opens up with a flying knee. Who the fuck does that? That's that, that was that, that was that dumb and young. Yeah. That's the best way to say it. But at the same time, that blissful ignorance, that's what made, that was his blueprint for so long, you know, and he's turned it into a whole fighting style, just that, you know, letting it off, hang out, letting it fly. And that's what worried me. That's why I thought in this fight with Dominic Reyes, it was going to be a closer fight. Because of the fact that Dominic Reyes now had that, what John used to have being that blissful ignorance. He didn't really know how much, you know, how better John was or didn't even care. He was just kind of like, huh, I can wait. You know what I'm saying? He was so confident himself, almost in an ignorant, blissful way, but it worked out for him, you know? Well, what's interesting about that fight is, first of all, it's a great argument for five round championship fights. Because for the first three rounds, Dominic Reyes was winning. Yeah. The question is, whether he won the third round. That's the one I believe that's up for grabs. Most people that I've talked to think John won the last two clearly. Most people, most people that I talked to that are experts, most people, few disagree, believe that Dominic Reyes won the first three. And the third round is the one that seems to be, you go, well, Dominic scored more, but it was close enough where you could see someone giving it to John, particularly since John was pressing the action. John was pushing forward. Maybe you give it to John, but they thought Dominic won it. But they said, if there's a disputable round, it is that third round. But one fucking judge gave John four rounds to one. That's insane. This is the same judge that when I believe, Luke Thomas was talking about this. I'm sorry if I'm wrong, because I'm not saying the judge's name, because I'm not sure if I'm correct. But I believe it's the same judge that Trevin Giles, who fought James Krause. Giles and Krause was an amazing fight. Giles wound up winning the decision. But the first round, Krause had his back for four minutes. And the judge gave that round to Giles, which is insane. I mean, for four minutes Krause had his back. The guy was fighting off chokes. Krause was real close to submitting him a couple times during those four minutes. And the judge, the same judge who gave four rounds to John Jones, gave that first round to Giles, where there was a dude on his back for four fucking minutes, most of the round. And maybe even a fucking more egregious fight was Andre Ewell versus Jonathan Martinez. That fight was fucking crazy. That fight was crazy. That was the most crazy one. Martinez won that fight. Martinez won that fight. Ewell broke his arm, I think. I'm not sure if it's broken arm, but he had a significant injury to his right hand early in the fight. Somewhere in between either the first or the second round, not sure, but he really couldn't throw a right hand. And it was kind of hanging. You could kind of see it was hanging. And Martinez put in work. It was an amazing performance by him. And he got fucked over, man. Real bad. It was bad decision making. There was a bunch of bad fights. There was a bunch of bad decisions. It wasn't just one. There was like four or five on a card of what, 12 fights, 11, 12 fights. I forget how many it was from the opening prelims. There was bad decisions. Just almost like people who don't know what they're seeing. Yeah. And that's crazy too, especially when we reached a point that we have in Mixed Martial Arts. I think that we've turned the corner in that, meaning the fact that there's so much out there, so much knowledge out there in a sport and everything else like that. If you're going to be judging it, you got to at least know when somebody is winning around. I mean, there's aspects of John's game that was a score some points. He was always moving forward with the action. But even when he was moving forward with the action, he wasn't terribly too offensive. He would come with his legs, but a lot of times he would allow Dominic to kind of be the first one initiating and then moving off. And sometimes it seemed like he was just kind of chasing him. But I think that it was that third round. That third round was that hard round to score. I think that Dom had the edge, but if you're going to be the champ, then you got to be the champ. And I don't think he did that. John Jones oppressed me so much with the shots that he was able to take. But more or less the mindset that John had, that mindset that John had in those championship rounds. To me, that showed that this guy is, he is a total package. And when it comes to fighting, just mentally speaking, he's somebody who I thought that was frustrated and working through his own frustrating in the fight, for his frustration in the fight, is difficult. And he took him to his own frustration and he just kept that pressure going. It took some big shots from a heavy hitter. But Dominic Reyes is a problem for anybody. He's a problem. He's a real problem, especially now that he's got that rub. He touched greatness with John, who's the greatest ever. I feel like those last two rounds should count more. This is my personal opinion, but John Cavanaugh said something on his Twitter page. I believe it was John Cavanaugh and it reflects exactly how I feel that if this fight was going to go on another five rounds, it's pretty clear to me who's going to win. Who's going to, who this is to the death. John Jones is going to win that fight. You know, if it's to the death, there's no doubt about it in my mind that John Jones eventually going to get them. Those last two rounds, Dominic Reyes was hurting. You could see him looking and taking big deep breaths and trying to move and his arms were labored and John just kept pressing, kept pressing, kept kicking him, kept punching him, kept trying for the takedown. And that should mean more. It should mean more towards the end of the fight. At the end of the fight, if you win a decision, but you just got your ass kicked for the last four minutes, that seems crazy to me that you won the fight. Yeah. Because I mean, I know this is a dumb way to think about it, but if we were in a schoolyard, right, we were in high school and some dude and another dude fought, the dude who's getting the shit beat out of them at the end of the fight is the guy who lost, right? When the teachers come and they pull you off that guy, that's who won. That's who won. And I know that you can't score a professional sport the way you look, but it is the rarest of rare professional sports because it's the sport of fighting and in fighting, when you're getting your ass kicked, you're supposed to lose. If you're getting your ass kicked, you lost. And if you're kicking the guy's ass, you win. Sounds crazy, but at the end of that fight, John Jones was kicking Dominic Reyes' ass. He was chasing him down. Dominic was taking a big deep breath. He was firing back when he fired back very well in the fourth round, but John absorbed. John has a fucking hell of a chin too. Oh my God. Hell of a chin. Oh my God. Hell of a chin. I mean, you can't, he's something special because of everything. It's not, he's something special because of his physical attributes. He's very tall and long, he's very strong. It's not just his skill. He's got great wrestling. He's got great striking. It is all, it is his mind too. It's all those things. It's his ability to press forward. It's ability to break people. His ability to stay on top of you, have that champion's mindset, and to know that he's fought the majority of his career as a world champion, which is fucking crazy. I mean, almost a decade as the greatest in the world, chasing everybody that he's fought. Every single fighter that he's fought, you look at them, they're all guys like you, guys like Machida, world champions, Rampage, world champions over and over and over again. You go through the list of them, just all these killers. There's this killer after killer, Gustafson. You know, I mean, you just keep going through his entire career. DC twice stopped him in the second fight. He's a fucking assassin. And the most impressive thing about it for me is the fact that, you know, on a physical scale, he's phenomenal. But just mentally speaking, to be able to go through everything that he's gone through, you know, the ups and downs and what that does to your mind, you know, what that does to your mind and just being able to put that to a side or be able to use it in order to go out and still perform as if like he hasn't missed a beat. That is hard because it gets to the point, you know, you get anything in life. You get tired of the monotony of it, you get jaded by it. He hasn't been jaded by it and he still goes out there and performs like that. That's impressive. I think he needed someone like Dominic to get that fear going too. I think he knew Dominic Reyes physically is a talented guy. He's a great athlete. He has tremendous footwork. His ability to change angles and then fire back is insane. It's so good. You saw it in the OSP fight where he knocked him out with like a couple seconds to go. You see it in a lot as Jared Cantoneer fight. He could step back and fire, fire uppercut, step back and fire that straight left. His ability to change direction is amazing. And I think a lot of that could be attributed to his football, basketball, I mean, baseball, like footwork, movement, his ability to explode, all that stuff that he did in other sports, I think directly translates to his ability to move really well inside the octagon. And then on top of it, he's gigantic. He's the same size as John, which is very unusual for John to face someone that's his height. And he's really fucking strong too. That was the intangible that I think that John didn't expect. He didn't expect for him to be as strong as he was. When he's able to get back up every time, like get up like he wasn't even on him. His legs are fucking huge. You look at Ray as his legs. He's got tremendous power. I mean, both with his punches, but also with his ability to move, man, he was throwing great kicks. He was chopping at John's legs. I mean, out of any fight in John's future, I want to see a rematch. I really want to see what Dominic Ray is looks like now with this rub, understanding how close he was. And then the amount of conditioning that he's going to have to put himself through to be able to do that again, five rounds. And it's not like either guy got fucked up in that fight where they're going to be severely damaged. It's not like one of those crazy wars where like Adesanya Kelvin Gastel. And at the end of that fight, I was like, Oh my God, you know, I hope Kelvin takes some time off after that one. That was chaos, just wildness. It wasn't like that. It was a grueling, difficult, hard fight, but it wasn't a fight where there was so much damage that both John and Dominic need to take a long time off. I feel like you could make that fight in eight months. Absolutely. And that would be the fight to make. That's a crazy rematch. And the thing about it was, surprisingly to see like they, like their faces weren't beat up at all. And I'm like, these dudes were landing some shots on each other and their faces not even, like I thought for sure John's lip would be all swollen like it was when he fought. Gustafson. He took those shots. Well, man, it's amazing. It's amazing. But I think that this is exactly what John needed in that light heavyweight weight class, because, you know, it does, it was getting kind of stagnant and I think it needed some time to mature. But I think, I think Dominic Ray has just said, yo, you better stay here for a little bit. And here's another guy, Corey Anderson. Oh, yes. Corey Anderson. Oh, yeah. Listen, that's the dark horse. I've been telling everybody. Listen, that's the dark horse. The way he knocked out Johnny Walker. Yes. And he's angry. He's angry. He's angry. And that's something you've never seen Corey. Yes. You've never seen that before. After that fight, he was like letting everybody know you've fucking just been slipping. Yeah. You've been sleeping on me. You guys have been pretending that I don't exist. That's, that's why I'm out here beating the best in the world. If he fights John Jones, I think that's when a John better be like, all right, he better be so ready. Yeah. Corey's got, he doesn't have a chip. He's got logs on his shoulder. I know. Corey, he's angry. He's pissed. He's pissed off. After that Johnny Walker fight, he was so out of character. He's screaming and yelling and fucking, you know, he was so, it was angry after he won. He knocked him out in the first round and then he's bad. The years of disrespect though. And that's how he trained though. He always trained with that, that mindset like, oh, they don't respect me. You know, that's why he worked so hard. Yes. Yeah.