Volkov shares my sentiment about Jon Jones not yet being fully tested

Jon Jones kind of shook up the MMA world when in his first heavyweight bout he bested the most boring fighter the heavyweight division has ever known Ciryl Gane in the very first round.

I stated almost immediately that while it was undeniable that Jones deserved the win, we haven't seen enough of him actually fight to really know if he belongs at the top of the stack. For one thing, a guy who has NEVER fought at heavyweight getting an immediate title shot is a bunch of BS in my book but this is the UFC we are talking about here and they don't have a great track record of doing what is right, but just doing what is going to make them the most money. Jon Jones is that guy so of course he gets the fight. The fact that he won so quickly is going to breathe new life into the previously very lackluster heavyweight division, there is no doubt about that.

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While most people are praising Jones perhaps out of fear of backlash from Dana White for even attempting to be critical of one of his main paychecks, there are a few people out there that have the balls to at least be a little bit critical of his performance.

For one thing Ciryl Gane is not a great fighter. He is great at stand up defense, but he was IMO, never a true threat and merely seemed to be attempting to not lose in his fights rather than win convincingly. Gane was pushed to the top for a number of reasons, one being that there isn't much talent in the heavyweight "pool" and also because it was quite obvious that UFC wants to penetrate the European market more than they already have. In his 11-2 record, Gane has mostly decision victories and his only KO victories were against nobodies, has-beens, and another guy who didn't deserve his ranking simply because he was a crowd pleaser because he drinks beer out of customers' shoes after a win.

Any time that he has truly been tested by someone who is actually good, he loses.

But let's get back to the point here. Alexander Volkov is no stranger to the UFC or the heavyweight division. He is 35-10, which certainly isn't an impressive win/loss ratio, but his fights are always exciting. He KO's opponents on the regular or gets KO'd by them - which is something I think that most of the MMA world would prefer to see than a 15-25 minute dancing contest that seems to be the objective of someone like Ciryl Gane.

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_{Getting a TKO victory against Alistair Overeem isn't exactly front-page news, but at least you know his name}

Volkov was critical of Jon Jones' defeat of Gane for the same reasons that I am: We didn't actually get to see very much action. It was something like 20 strikes landed TOTAL between both me before the submission. He had this to say at a press conference

(we) really we haven’t seen too much from Jon Jones in this new division yet. Obviously, we see that he is very good at wrestling and instilling his gameplan and holding people down and mauling people, but we’d like to see him on his feet or maybe with somebody who is able to keep distance from his [sic] or somebody who is better at defending wrestling

I couldn't agree more. Jones won that fight and he did so fairly and with relative ease. It would be a lot better to see him against someone with a bit more of a well-rounded skill-set though and honestly, I don't know who that could possibly be in the heavyweight division ever since Ngannou walked away.

Stipe Miocic is the obvious choice in my mind and they already seem to be pushing for that. Volkov could also be a good opponent and if that is even going to be considered, he is going to need to win convincingly at his upcoming bout vs Romanov on March 11th.

This matchup between Volkov and Romanov almost seems like a setup to me in an effort to push Volkov back up in the rankings as well since Romanov's opponents are basically a who's who of who cares.

I think a lot is going to be decided in the next month or so but as it stands now I am not super excited about Jones being the champion although I am sure Dana White is because: money.