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Alex Williams is a PhD student in clinical health psychology. Tom Suter is a PhD student in molecular biology. The lower the stakes, the pettier the arguments.This is Sayre's Law.
Williams: No, Chael Sonnen Will Not Defeat Jon Jones
Jones is a 9-to-1 favorite. Some have called it the longest odds in a championship fight in UFC history. I’m not sure; the odds in Andrei Arlovski’s defense against Justin Eilers may have been longer. However, that there’s uncertainty over whether Sonnen is a bigger underdog than someone who received a heavyweight title shot immediately after losing to Paul Buentello indicates that Sonnen might be overmatched.
Jones wasn’t outwrestled by Ryan Bader or Rashad Evans. No, they didn’t shoot at every opportunity. But even if Sonnen shoots more often, will it matter? He struggled to take down England’s (!) Michael Bisping.
Sonnen’s best hope if he fails to get the takedown is that Jones decides to keep it standing. After all, Sonnen’s not known for his guard work and hey, he did outbox Anderson Silva for a bit. It sounds impressive until we remember that Damian Maia and Thales Leites also took one or two rounds apiece off of Silva in fights that stayed standing.
Suter: Yes, Chael Sonnen Will Defeat Jon Jones
Sonnen is definitely and rightfully an underdog. And MMA logic does indeed provide a compelling case for Jones being a better wrestler than Kael (Bader and Evans both wrestled in college, and Jones stopped THEIR takedowns!!!). However, I'm going to try to hold my half of this article to a slightly higher standard of discourse than MMA logic, and I'm going to argue that the answer to the question of "who's a better wrestler" is a bit more complicated than a simple "Jones is!" or "Sonnen is!"
When actually re-watching the fights between Jones and Bader or Evans, it becomes apparent he wasn't facing particularly high level MMA wrestling attack pressure. In terms of Jones' take-down defense, Jones did very handily stop two clear double-leg attacks by Bader. However, both of these attacks were made by a visibly tired Bader from great distance and with absolutely no set-up. While the Evans fight saw another college wrestler unable to score any take-downs, Evans also spent the majority of this fight boxing from the outside. While there's no doubt that Jones probably has great takedown defense, my point is that Jones has not faced the sort of aggressive, persistent, and well set-up wrestling offense that Kael will has been shown to bring. (BUT TOM, WHAT ABOUT MATYUSHENKO?!?!?!)
Thus, there's evidence that Jones is good against wrestling, but there's not evidence that he's un-take-down-able to the type of wrestling offense presented consistently by Kael.
In terms of Kael's offensive wrestling, even when "struggling" he managed to take down Bisping four times in their fight (and while Bisping hasn't consistently fought top wrestlers, he's only allowed three takedowns in his last 21 non-Kael rounds, which indicates Bisping is far from bottom of the barrel in terms of defensive wrestling). Sonnen has also scored over three take-downs in six of his last seven fights (against opponents such as Nate Marquardt and the judoka Yushin Okami), with the one exception being the fight where he showcased his back-fist attack (after, of course, dominating Silva for a round with his offensive wrestling).
Thus, when comparing Kael's offensive wrestling to Jones's defensive wrestling, I'm going to give the edge to Sonnen given Sonnen's consistently high offensive wrestling output and the lack of evidence as to how Jones will perform against the type of wrestling offense Kael brings.
To keep this brief, I won't really go into the "Jones wrestling offense vs. Sonnen wrestling defense" discussion. Jones can take people down, and Sonnen can be taken down. I might even admit that there's a bigger advantage here for Jones than when comparing Kael's O to Jones's D. However, Jones has increasingly shown a coldly rational and conservative "play the numbers" approach to his fights, and I see his offense centering pretty firmly on his ridiculous striking advantage. Of course I could be and would be excited to be wrong ($10 someone comments about how I don't know how to properly spell "Chael").
Alex Williams has been an MMA Torch contributor since 2008. Follow him on Twitter @williamspsych. Tom Suter is a new contributor to the Torch.
[Chael Sonnen art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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