Jon Jones finally defends his heavyweight title this weekend when he faces Stipe Miocic in the main event of UFC 309. It’s a fight nearly two years in the making and could possibly be the last dance for both of the future Hall of Famers.

How can each man walk away Saturday as the champion and what are the most important parts of this long-awaited matchup? Let’s dive in.

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Paths to Victory for Jon Jones at UFC 309

What is there to say about Jon Jones that hasn’t already been said? Jones is universally agreed to be one of the greatest fighter of all time and the greatest light heavyweight ever. At his peak, Jones was a tour de force of imagination and execution, capable of seemingly anything inside of the cage.

In the early stages of his career, Jones was all creativity and violence; the rare kind of talent who fought like an action hero, except the stuff he did actually worked. As time went on and he got older, Jones then morphed from a chaotic dervish of destruction into a cerebral assassin who minimized risk with a sniping jab and his patented oblique kick to slowly diminish his opposition over 25 minutes. Then, Jones took three years off to move up to heavyweight and, in his return fight up a weight class, Jones showed a ruthless efficiency in going back to his grappling roots.

So which version of Jones will show up Saturday? All of them? None? In truth, we don’t really know.

Jones is probably the most talented fighter of all time but he’s also very likely declining (his transparent refusal to fight Tom Aspinall hints that Jones himself may be aware of this fact). He’s 37 and been fighting professionally for 16 years. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the body and given how rarely he’s fought in recent years, it is very hard to feel confident in what version of Jones shows up Saturday.

Fortunately, it probably doesn’t matter. If Jones wants to stay standing, Miocic can’t take him down, and his particular brand of out-fighting is well-suited against Miocic, who doesn’t have the best footwork and struggles to close range. On the other hand, perhaps Jones decides the safest course of action is to put Miocic on the mat where Miocic has never shown to be much of a threat. Miocic can wrestle but Jones is better there and should have enough horsepower to force the issue and pursue victory that way as well.

My best guess is that Jones does a bit of both, drawing Miocic in with a striking battle before changing levels and getting takedowns. Once on top, Jones is (well, was and may still be) a terrifying force of nature with elbows and ground-and-pound, so he should have the run of play in this scenario.

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Paths to victory for Stipe Miocic at UFC 309

For all the question marks around Jones in this fight, Stipe Miocic somehow has more. The two-time heavyweight champion is 42 years old, has not fought in over three years and hasn’t won a fight in over four years. He currently has no wins over fighters who compete in the UFC. There’s a reason people are entirely writing him off on Saturday.

Then again, being written off is sort of par for the course for Miocic. Even as he rose up the ranks and began putting together the most successful résumé ever for a UFC heavyweight, the Cleveland native never really felt like a generational champion. There was always a sense that Miocic was a placeholder until the next great heavyweight showed up. Except they never did and he kept going to work, punching in, and getting wins.

Well, he’s going to have to do the same on Saturday.

Again, we don’t really know what to expect from either guy but if we go by their most recent performances, Miocic has an uphill battle ahead of him. Jones is certainly the superior grappler and the better athlete. Also—and I mean this as respectfully as possible—Jones has a much better team. It took Miocic nearly two full fights with Daniel Cormier to realize he should attack the body, despite Jones putting that very thing on tape against him! It’s a fair bet that if either man comes into Saturday with some brilliant game plan, it’s probably Jones.

So where are Miocic’s advantages? On the feet. Don’t get me wrong, Jones is probably the better kickboxer of the two (and he’s vastly superior in the clinch because Jones is one of the greatest clinch fighters ever) but Jones is very beatable in a striking match.

The biggest weakness Jones has on the feet is he’s risk averse to the point of a problem. This is a guy who barely scraped out a win over Thiago Santos—who blew out both his knees during the fight—because he would not do anything for fear of getting hit back. Young Jon Jones would have obliterated Dominick Reyes, but Jones should have lost to Reyes primarily because Reyes took chances and Jones will not. So the biggest thing for Miocic is to simply adopt the Dricus du Plessis methodology of “eff it, I’ll keep throwing, eventually it’ll hurt him.”

Along those same lines, power is the one definitive edge Miocic has over Jones. Stipe is not a Francis Ngannou-level puncher, but he’s a darn good one and though Jones has shown a very good chin, he also clearly doesn’t want to get hit. Miocic needs to make this messy early and land some shots to put that reticence into Jones and make him clam up. The more comfortable Jones is in the cage, the worse it is for his opponents, and they way to make him uncomfortable is to hit him.

Finally, it’s never been a huge weapon in his arsenal, but I hope Miocic has been working on low kicks. Jones’s stance and spindly stems make him an ideal target for chopping the legs out from under him, limiting movement, scoring points, and taking away his explosion. Stipe needs to chop that wood to have any chance in this fight.

One Big Thing

The outcome of most high level fights depends on dozens of different things, but frankly, it’s a lot to list all of those out. Instead, let’s simplify things by determining the One Big Thing that will determine Saturday’s winner.

Does heavyweight matter?

This is Jones’s second fight at heavyweight and he’s reportedly smaller for this matchup than he was for the fight with Ciryl Gane. More importantly, Jones appears to have no interest in sticking around at heavyweight and continues to suggest he wants to fight dudes his size. Maybe that’s all a game, or maybe Jones really isn’t comfortable in this weight class. After all, the people who gave Jones the most difficult time in his career were simply the largest guys he fought (save Gane).

If Stipe comes out and puts mitts on Jones and he can’t take the shots the same as he did at 205 pounds, things get very interesting very quickly.

One Small Thing

Now we know the single most important factor of Saturday’s main event, but what about something else entirely that almost certainly won’t happen but if it does could change everything.

Are the MMA gods paying attention?

The buildup for this fight has been among the most frustrating to watch in years. A couple of month ago Jones was teasing he might fight Tom Aspinall after the Stipe fight. Then it turned into “I’m probably retiring.” Then in the last couple of weeks the Jones narrative shifted to “Actually I want to fight Alex Pereira and Tom Aspinall doesn’t deserve it” and he admitted that Stipe is a good stylistic matchup for him coming off an injury.

This all culminated this week at Media Day where Jones entirely dismissed Aspinall as an opponent, said he only wants to fight fun matchups with “guys my size” despite being heavyweight champion, stated outright that beating Ciryl Gane was meaningless, and then issued an ultimatum of “either it’s Pereira or I retire.” It’s an astonishingly shameless admission that Jones is not looking for challenges, he’s looking for easy paydays. Jones is in his Floyd Mayweather era and for whatever reason the UFC is going along with it.

But the MMA gods are not so pliable.

It would truly be the funniest thing in the history of this sport if Jones went through all of this ridiculousness and then ultimately got knocked out by the 42-year-old firefighter who hasn’t fought since 2021. And he is certainly giving the MMA gods plenty of reasons to make it so.

Prediction

Perhaps you could tell from everything above, but I don’t think much of this fight. Even if you could take a time machine and pluck the perfect versions of themselves, I don’t think Miocic has much to offer Jones in a fight, and this is far from that. Jones is still somewhat near his peak while Miocic is well beyond it, and I suspect he gets rolled up in short order.

Jon Jones def. Stipe Miocic via TKO (12-6 elbows) — Round 1, 3:41