The UFC rounds out another exciting year with their last PPV of 2018 in Las Vegas. It features the return of probably the most divisive and polarising fighter in the entire promotion: Jon “Bones” Jones. He will come back to a rematch with Alexander Gustafsson, who has come closer than anyone else to defeating him. In addition, we’ll also see the first ever women’s champion vs champion fight when Featherweight champ Cris Cyborg takes on Bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes. Let’s break down the fights.
Jon Jones (1) vs Alexander Gustafsson (2)
Jon Jones (1/3) is back. It was made official on Tuesday last week during a fighting license application hearing in Nevada. During the hearing, the commissioner gently suggested that Jones might, in order to help clean up his image and regain some of the many fans that he’s lost, consider enrolling in VADA, the voluntary anti-doping agency. It speaks volumes that Jones and his lawyer ‘agreed in principal’ but has not officially agreed to anything.
So, after serving an 18-month ban (and a reduced sentence for snitching to USADA on another fighter), his third such suspension, Jon Jones will be back in the Octagon on the 27th December. He is also back in the pound-for-pound rankings, straight in at number 3. The oddsmakers have him as a favourite to win the fight, and it is hard to argue against his record. But if anyone can beat him, it’s Gus.
Of all of Jones’s opponents, Alexander Gustafsson (2/1) has come closest. Really, really close. He is the only person with anything like the same height and reach that Jones has, used his movement well, keeping Jones at distance, and then closing it fast to land his stinging overhand right. He even took Jones down for the first time in Jones’s career while at the same time stuffing all but one of Jon’s takedowns. As the fight went on, an increasingly desperate Jones began to rely on spinning back elbows and oblique kicks to try to slow the Swede down. Meanwhile Gus kept landing strikes and while they weren’t as powerful as Jon’s, there were significantly more of them. By the end, both men had left it all in the Octagon.
Amazingly, of the two fighters, Jones has fought more recently. Gustafsson’s last fight came in May 2017, a dominant performance over Glover Teixeira. Since then he has been dogged by injuries both to him and his scheduled opponents. Questions of whether Jones’s long layoff will have affected him become irrelevant since neither one has been in action.
Prediction: With both men so evenly matched in terms of size, style and the amount of time they’ve taken off recently, it is almost impossible to call. Many of those who disagree with Jon Jones’s behaviour and lifestyle will be desperate for Gus to win, but that’s not exactly a smart analysis. Instead, go back to Gus’s last fight and the devastating uppercuts he used to take Glover Teixiera down. But even this will likely not be enough to deter a hungry Jones with everything to prove. With so little else to go, you have to back to the first fight. Jones to win by decision.
Amanda Nunes (c) vs Cristiane Justino Venâncio (c)
Amanda Nunes (21/10) has a huge task ahead of her. Cris Cyborg (4/13) may be getting on in years, but still has not been beaten since 2005. Like Jones, her career has been tainted (pun intended) by a doping ban and she has never successfully shaken that image. Now coming toward the end of her UFC contract, she is facing possibly the strongest competition possible in Amanda Nunes. Nunes’ own Bantamweight Belt is not on the line (since the UFC really don’t like champ-champs holding up divisions), which is probably a good thing for Nunes since we have Cyborg as a heavy favourite.
The Rest of the Card
There are some fan favourites and former legends appearing on the remainder of this card, including Carlos Condit, Andre Arlovski and Uriah Hall. Even BJ Penn is returning for this, although many will be wishing he’d hang up his gloves rather than take another beating. There are plenty of quality fights in the last show of the year, so here’s hoping that they make it a good one!