If Jon Jones and Israel Adesanya continue to reign in their respective divisions, the consensus is the stars will end up fighting. Recently Michael Bisping was asked to weigh-on on the much-discussed, theoretical match-up, and the legend thinks Adesanya could become a champ-champ.
Bisping says Jones is “beatable”
Jones and Adesanya have been verbally sparring for over a year now and as a result, talk about the stars fighting at some juncture continues. Their issues seem to have kicked off when after the middleweight champ defeated Anderson Silva in February, 2019, he said he planned to go “hunting” after another great in Jones.
The light-heavyweight champ didn’t appreciate the comments, and the two have gone at it through social media and interviews ever since. In fact, just recently the two went to war on Twitter again.
Well, recently Bisping spoke with Submission Radio, and the former middleweight champ was asked to comment on Adesanya vs. Jones. Here’s some of what the British star had to say (quotes via MMA Junkie).
“On the feet, they’d match up pretty well,” Bisping said. “I can’t see why Israel wouldn’t have at least an equal footing or potentially an advantage.
We saw in (Jones’) last few fights he’s not invincible, he’s not superhuman – he is beatable. Everybody’s beatable, trust me. And Jon, the longer he does it, the longer he goes, it’s kind of a game of odds.
At some point, someone’s going to beat him, and it seems to be happening more and more. I mean, the fight against Dominick Reyes – and I’m not trying to dump on Jon Jones – but I feel that Reyes won that fight.
“The one before, Thiago Santos, that was a close fight, and Thiago Santos had a bloody blown ACL from Round 1. The fight before that, Anthony Smith.
So, you know, Jon isn’t unbeatable, and Adesanya is also undefeated. They’re both pretty undefeated in my eyes.
It’s a great fight. I’d love to see it one day, but I’m not sure I would ever see Israel at heavyweight. That’s why I kind of laughed there, ’cause he’s certainly very tall.
But he’s a light middleweight at the end of the day. So at heavyweight, he’s gonna have a big disadvantage there.”
Bisping makes some very solid points. Jones has looked beatable in his last couple of outings and Adesanya’s striking is amongst the best in the game.
You do have to wonder how Adesanya would deal with Jones’ reach advantage and the takedown attempts, which you would think, would ultimately come from “Bones”. Then again, Jones opted to stand and trade with Thiago Santos.
But will it happen?
Adesanya has said he’s targeting 2021 for a fight with Jones. So, in the interim, both men will need to defend their respective titles at least once, possibly twice.
If that happens, then you would think the UFC will do what it takes to make the all-star bout happen.
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