“After all the back and forth with Daniel Cormier, and for it all to end the way it did, with me knocking him out and getting the light heavyweight championship back, I couldn’t ask for it to go any better,” said Jones, who was subsequently stripped of the title and suspended, with the win turned to a no contest. But with that suspension in the rearview mirror and Jones cleared to compete again, he believes everything has worked itself out.
“Without the steroid situation, the Daniel Cormier fight would have just been a fairytale ending,” he said. “And, for me, honestly, it’s still a fairytale ending because I think in the minds of the fans, they know who is the more dominant fighter between us two, and here we are, a year later, fighting for another light heavyweight championship. So everything worked out great.”
And in American life, everyone loves a good comeback story. Jones has his chance to write one on Saturday against the one fighter who came close to beating him. Jones doesn’t dismiss what Gustafsson did in their first bout in 2013, but he also believes that “The Mauler” didn’t get his best that night in Toronto.
“In the first fight, I came from an extremely arrogant place,” said Jones. “I didn’t think that I could possibly lose. I was a super young guy and I was beating all the legends of our sport. Honestly, on a religious level, I felt like God had blessed me to be a fighter and I felt like God didn’t want me to lose. I really felt that. I thought it was impossible to lose because of some magical powers God gave me. And Gustafsson showed me that I’m very human. I was really starting to sip my own Kool-Aid.”
