MMA
Daniel Cormier scoffs at Jon Jones-Michael Jordan comparison, believes Jones’ legacy will be ‘toppled’
Daniel Cormier wants people to hold their horses when it comes to comparing Jon Jones to all-time greats from other sports.
Specifically, Cormier took umbrage with the suggestion that Jones will have a legacy as long-lasting as NBA legend Michael Jordan. A six-time NBA champion and five-time MVP, Jordan is widely regarded as the best basketball player to ever walk the Earth.
Jones is held in similar regard by the MMA community, having reigned atop the light heavyweight division from 2011 to 2020 (his runs halted only by outside-of-the-cage legal issues as well as failed drug tests in 2016 and 2017), and he never suffered a loss in 29 pro bouts outside of a disqualification to Matt Hamill. In his most recent fight, he captured the UFC heavyweight title with a one-sided submission win over Ciryl Gane.
The Jones-Jordan comparison came up during Cormier’s recent appearance on the Pound 4 Pound podcast when host Kamaru Usman suggested that it isn’t crazy to consider Jones the Jordan of MMA. Cormier vehemently disagreed.
“You done with the interview?” Cormier said, jokingly. “Do you just want to be done? What? … So Jon Jones is the Michael Jordan and LeBron James of MMA? You’re going to sit up here, real life, one, two, three, four, five cameras… Jon Jones, to me, if I’m talking about a football or basketball equivalent. Jon Jones, when I’m looking for a sports [comparison], is a guy who has done so much, but because of all the other stuff, it’s hard to put him in that rarified air.
“If Michael Jordan was doing illegal stuff, we don’t know about it, I can’t judge him. Georges St-Pierre, can’t judge him. I know of the other stuff, so it’s hard for me to say this guy’s just sitting up there. Michael Jordan got done playing basketball in 1996 and people still don’t want to say somebody’s better. There will be a person that comes along that people will say replaces Jon Jones as the greatest of all-time. He has not left such a legacy that it doesn’t feel like it’s [never] going to be toppled. Jordan left a legacy that we have seen LeBron James do what he do, we’ve seen Kobe [Bryant] do what he do, we have seen these great players and they’re still unwilling to say they’re better.”
Aside from Jones’ well-documented transgressions, which Cormier has long maintained are impossible to overlook when discussing his legacy, the UFC Hall of Famer just doesn’t believe that Jones has done enough to make an unassailable case to be considered the GOAT. “DC” is a two-division champion himself having held the heavyweight and—as a beneficiary of Jones’ suspensions—the light heavyweight title.
Up next for Jones, he defends the heavyweight title against Stipe Miocic at UFC 309 on Nov. 16 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Losing to Jones twice (the second bout overturned to a no-contest when Jones tested positive for a banned substance, Cormier takes nothing away from his longtime rival’s ability to step up in big game situations.
“I think that’s what he does,” Cormier said. “The bigger the challenge, the better he prepares. So that lends this question: People see to be looking past Stipe. Everybody’s looking past Stipe, so will he not train himself as hard? Because if he looks past Stipe, Stipe’s a bad boy. Stipe Miocic is a bad boy.
“He hits hard. He’s not slow. He can wrestle. He’s got good cardio, and Stipe’s not a quitter. That’s going to be a tougher fight for Jon Jones than people even imagine.”
And as much as Jones has been criticized for sticking with the UFC’s plan for him to fight Miocic as opposed to pushing for a fight with interim champion Tom Aspinall, Cormier isn’t using that as a reason to downgrade Jones’ in-cage acumen.
“He’s so much smarter than people give him credit for and he’s tough,” Cormier said. “He’s way tougher than people give him credit for.”
Yet not every club feels the same. Tottenham, under Ange Postecoglou, do not have a specialist set-piece coach and, since the beginning of last season, Spurs have conceded more set piece goals (excluding penalties) than every Premier League team, except for Nottingham Forest.
At Chelsea Mauricio Pochettino didn’t have a set-piece coach, believing he did not need one, before the Blues hired Cueva with a new set-piece department being set up at Stamford Bridge.
That particular issue was one of the reasons for Chelsea replacing Pochettino with Enzo Maresca in the summer.
There needs to be buy-in for the position to work, and Austin MacPhee was one of the only staff kept on when Unai Emery replaced Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa two years ago.
Given how hands-on Emery is, it is a seal of approval in itself.
MacPhee – who joined Villa from Midtjylland in 2021 – was also Scotland’s set-piece coach but stepped down last month to spend more time with his ill father.
He has been credited with Villa’s improved set-pieces and last season they became the first team in Europe to score 20 goals from set plays.
Former Northern Ireland boss Ian Baraclough worked with MacPhee for the national side between 2020 and 2021.
He said: “Austin was innovative. I gave him free reign and it was a good relationship. He was very strong in his beliefs on things. Sometimes you may have to pull the reins on it, but the majority of the time you could see things working.
“It’s just whether you’ve got enough time to work on that but I’m not surprised he’s at Aston Villa and doing well. He communicates very well and he’s one of the standouts in the Premier League when it comes to that role.”
Though Baraclough rightly points out set-pieces have not suddenly become important – they have always been worked on, but have become more inventive.
“Now you have something like the draught excluder,” he said.
“That was something we deployed in Bosnia (in 2020). I hadn’t seen it before and Austin came to me and said ‘what about this? I’ve seen this at Atletico Madrid’.
“We were one of the first British sides to use it and the players were thinking ‘what’s all this about?’ You could see them laughing and giggling. It was Paddy McNair we used on the floor, it’s genius really.”
As teams increasingly focus on the fine margins, former Blackburn and England striker Chris Sutton emphasises how focus on set-pieces is nothing new.
He said: “The difference in the past was that managers who wanted to work on them, did so themselves.
“I get how the game has evolved since then with the new technology that is available, but it is like these things and ideas did not exist back in the day, when they definitely did.”
Marie Hobinger scores a stoppage-time penalty as Liverpool register their first Women’s Super League win of the season with a thrilling 3-2 win at Tottenham.
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Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca says the game got “more difficult” after Nottingham Forest’s James Ward-Prowse was sent off during their 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge.
MATCH REPORT: Chelsea 1-1 Nottingham Forest
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Sportscene pundits Michael Stewart and Shelley Kerr assess Kilmarnock’s stunning comeback to beat Dundee 3-2 at Dens Park.
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Sportscene pundits Michael Stewart and Shelley Kerr assess the second yellow card shown to Dundee’s Mo Sylla in their 3-2 defeat by Kilmarnock.
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Match of the Day 2 pundits Joe Hart, Stephen Warnock and former Brighton manager Graham Potter analyse the Seagulls’ 3-2 victory over Tottenham in the Premier League.
MATCH REPORT: Brighton 3-2 Tottenham
Watch Match of the Day 2 on BBC iPlayer.
Available to UK users only.
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