The 22-year old UFC light heavyweight fighter Jon ‘Bones’ Jones is prepared to take on three-time NCAA Division III National Champion Matt ‘The Hammer’ Hamill as part of this Saturday night’s The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale event. Jones respects Hamill’s experience including his outstanding wrestling skills, but he truly feels that his strategy will pave the way to a nice victory come December 5th.
Jones plans on adding another win to his already undefeated record of 9-0, but he’ll have to get past the hard-hitting ‘Hammer’ if he plans on achieving a perfect 10-0 after this fight. Does the young Greco-Roman wrestler have what it takes to beat Hamill?
From Jon Jones:
“Whatever he does and gives me, I’ll take. The biggest advantage is that I’m sparring more, doing more jiu jitsu, wrestling with guys like Rashad Evans who has great boxing and is three times faster than Matt Hamill, and if I can stop Rashad’s shot, that gives me ultra-confidence against a guy like Matt Hamill who is a totally different level of speed. Greg Jackson has a really great strategy for me this fight – a really, really great strategy for this fight – and one thing with Greg is that while he’s teaching me technique and ways of thinking, he still allows me to be myself and he loves my creativity and loves my flow. I’m just smarter than I used to be when it comes to fighting. No disrespect to Hamill, but there is nothing I can see him doing to me that Rashad hasn’t tried or Keith wouldn’t do…If you could zoom in on my chicken legs, that will probably tell you why I ended up fighting. I was really athletic and pretty good as a senior, but it took me a long time to finally get respect on the football field, and it just wasn’t my thing. No coaches wanted to scout a guy who looks like a little girl in the lower-body department. I just kept the faith, and I found my niche. I feel as if I’m just blessed to be on this route that I’m on. I train really hard, and you don’t train extremely hard and expect not to be where you’re supposed to be. Getting closer to my ultimate goal (of winning the belt), tougher competition comes with it.”
