UFC Hall of Famer and former light heavyweight and heavyweight champion, Randy Couture, has been giving his thoughts on the upcoming 205-pound title fight pitting Jon Jones vs. Lyoto Machida, which will go down tomorrow night (Dec. 10, 2011) at UFC 140 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
According to "The Natural," Jones has made it look easy throughout his young mixed martial arts (MMA) career, walking through each of his opponents with relative ease. But he won't have it easy when he steps inside the Octagon to take on the always crafty Machida.
Couture has firsthand experience when it comes to "The Dragon," as he went to-to-toe with Brazilian buttkicker at the record-breaking UFC 129: "St. Pierre vs. Shields" event that went down this past April 30.
"Captain America" was on the receiving end of a flying front-kick to the face that would have made Mr. Miyagi proud. The loss ended Couture's three fight win streak and ultimately marked the final fight of his mixed martial arts (MMA) career.
Speaking to ESPN.com, Couture says that while Jones is on a roll at the moment, he will have trouble dealing with the elusiveness of Machida:
"Machida's style was everything I expected it to be. I studied the tapes but he's just hard to get a handle on. I certainly don't thing Jon's going to have an easy time of it catching up with him. He's elusive, he's a great athlete, he's a tremendous counter-fighter and he has a lot of interesting tools. It was an interesting camp for me to prepare for him because he just does a lot of things differently to others guys that I've prepared for. Jon will find the same issues. I don't think it'll be a walkover, I don't think Jon will blow Machida's doors off, but Jon does have everything firing for him right now; he's long, he rangy, he's a tremendous wrestler, he's a tremendous athlete and he can strike with anybody. If Jon can get his hands on Machida he can take him down and it will be interesting to see how Lyoto deals with being under a guy like Jon."
Jones has cruised through the opening 15 bouts of his career, having never been in any kind of trouble in any of his previous nine UFC contests.
Once hailed as an unsolvable human version of a Rubik's cube, Machida has proven time after time that his elusiveness and unorthodox style of striking is difficult to prepare for or compete against, though Mauricio Rua may have something to say about that.
Any of you Maniacs have a solid rebuttal for Couture's argument?
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