Name: Jon Jones - "I would party one week before every fight..."
Uploaded: 2016-12-02T00:59:51.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jon Jones - "I would party one week before every fight..."' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jon Jones - "I would party one week before every fight..."' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-02. Transcript available.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
But you have a responsibility of greatness.
There's very few people that ever get to the position that you not just were in
when you won the title,
when you were the youngest ever UFC heavyweight or light heavyweight champion.
Not just that, the youngest ever UFC champion.
Not just that, there's also a responsibility that comes with potential.
It's not just what you've done.
And, you know, it's what you could have done.
Right.
You fought Alexander Gustafson.
Be honest about that.
How much did you train for that fight?
I trained.
I trained for the fight.
But I definitely had this thing where I just felt invincible.
And I did a lot of wild stuff leading up to the fight.
I definitely didn't give it my all.
As far as partying and not sleeping right?
Mainly partying, drinking, staying up all night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, when you win a fight like that, where you weren't 100%,
does that sort of almost reinforce this idea that you could do anything you
want?
And then, man, imagine if I trained next time, if it's someone big, I'll train.
So I have this, I'm going to share something with, I'm not sure if I've ever
shared this with anyone else before, but I had this crazy thing that I would do
where I would party one week before every fight.
And I did it throughout my whole career.
And this was stupid, but it was this mental crutch that I had.
I literally would, one week before every fight, I would go out and I would get
blacked out, wasted.
And my logic was, if this guy were to beat me somehow, I can look myself in the
mirror and say that, well, I lost because I got hammered the week before the
fight.
So it was a built-in safety net.
It was a safety net.
Yeah, exactly.
So I did it my whole career.
I would go out and get hammered one week before every fight.
Have you ever worked with a sports psychologist?
No.
But now, but now I don't, my, my, my Ovin St. Preux fight was the first fight
that I did not do that.
It was my worst performance.
I see, I don't think it was your worst performance.
I think you were very unjustly criticized for that fight because I think Ovin
St. Preux is a very tough guy.
He's a very difficult fighter.
He's very strong.
He's got a brutal left kick.
He's athletic.
He moves well.
I believe it was a good performance, but it was some of my worst performance.
See, I think Ovin St. Preux is a really tough guy and it was a tough fight and
you hadn't fought in a long time.
I had a lot of stuff.
You were off for how long?
How many months?
16 months or something?
Yeah, it was over a year.
Yeah, it was a long time.
Over a year.
I had a lot of stuff going, yeah.
A lot of pressure.
And then you're fighting a guy who'd been pretty active and fought some good
guys, had a great victory over Shogun and looked real good in a lot of his
fights and was an up-and-comer.
The main thing about Ovin's that really bothered me was he was the most, well,
he was seasoned.
He actually has been fighting longer than I have.
A lot of people don't realize that.
But he was just so green and raw still.
Skill-wise.
Skill-wise.
Like, I don't, I study everybody extensively and then I come up with their
patterns.
I figure out the way they flinch.
I figure out their first favorite punch, their second favorite punch, their
third, their favorite combinations, their setups to their takedowns.
When they clinch, what side of their head's going to be on.
Literally everything.
I know everything about every opponent.
What side they're going to shoot, whether it's going to be head inside, head
outside.
What am I going to do about that, you know?
I figure out everything, why they shoot, what area of the cage they like to
shoot.
Everything.
And with Ovin St. Preux, he doesn't know what he's going to do.
He's so unorthodox.
You know, and he gets these random knockouts from these weird angles and he
just winks up and he almost closes his eyes.
The next thing you know, he's knocked somebody out, you know?
So the scary thing about him was he's so unpredictable.
And so, and I had a lot on the line.
So I just said, you know what?
This guy is, he's in a shell pretty much the whole fight.
He was defensive the whole fight.
And I just thought I'd close through the fight and not really risk anything,
which I felt like I let myself down because normally I would just, I mean,
normally when you get someone like that, you just, you know, take them out.
You know, I should have just been able to take them out.
But I was content with winning.
And I think that was, I think that was one of the first fights where I actually
just wanted to get the win, get my money, go back to what my actual goal, which
was DC, instead of wanting to finish this guy like normal.
So I had to really question my, I really questioned myself on why, why I was
like that, why I was content with coasting.
you