Jon Jones defeats Daniel Cormier via UD to retain title

AP Photo/The Las Vegas Sun, Steve Marcus

After all of the talk leading up to this one, it had to feel good for these two men to finally hit one another in the face.

Heading into his title fight with Jon Jones under the bright lights of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Daniel Cormier had never dropped a round in his 15-fight mixed martial arts career. Tonight, he came out on the wrong end of a unanimous 49-46 x 3 decision, dropping four out of five rounds to the now 8-time defending world champ.

Much has been made of Jones “disrespecting” Cormier when he said “I bet I could take you down,” upon their first meeting four years ago. How dare a young mixed martial artist say anything of the sort to a decorated freestyle wrestler like Cormier. Jones made a statement by scoring a take down within the first minute of the contest. Cormier had success early on in the clinch where he landed right uppercuts at will but Jones was able to adapt and control Cormier’s with hand and head fighting for the latter part of the fight.

“I’m sorry I’m being classless right now,” Jones said to Joe Rogan following his victory over Cormier. “I do not like DC and this is why I’m being this way.” Jones would tell Cormier fans to take back their ‘Break Bones’ shirts saying that they were wasting their money. Due to time constraints, Cormier was not given a post-fight interview. Both men should have plenty more to say during tonight’s post-fight presser following the event. You can watch that here.

Here are some stats from the fight via the fine folks over at FightMetric.

Jones went 92 for 178 in the significant strikes category landing at a 51% clip while Cormier hit Jones 58 out of 165 times for 35%. Jones landed 3 out of 5 of his take down attempts while Cormier landed 1 out of 8, earning a morale victory by finally getting the champ down in the very final round. It was too little too late. After landing 51 sig. strikes over the first 3 rounds, Cormier slowed in the final two only landing 7 strikes to Jones’ 27.