Greg Jackson: Jon Jones would have beat Daniel Cormier at UFC 197

When Jon Jones returned to the Octagon at UFC 197 against Ovince Saint Preux, he admitted that he was gun-shy, and hesitant to take advantage of openings throughout the fight.

After the fight, UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier explained that he believes he would have defeated Jones if he had been able to fight at the event.

While many agreed with Cormier, Jon Jones’ head coach disagreed believes that Jones would have won the fight. He spoke with Yves Edwards on ‘The Neutral Corner’.

“Jon’s one of those guys that fights to the level of his competition,” Jackson said during an appearance on the Sherdog Radio Network’s ”The Neutral Corner” show with Yves Edwards. “When the going gets tough he gets going for sure. I’m very confident he would have won that night because he would step up to that level. He’s one of those guys if you push him really hard he will push back.

“For me, we’d done so much work for Daniel, I think he still would have won that night. If you push him hard, that almost wakes him up.”

“The night of [UFC 197] I was a little, I wouldn’t say disappointed, but I think we should have opened up more,” Jackson said. “I’m very hard on myself because I feel it’s my responsibility to prepare the fighter the right way. Sometimes people might misinterpret what I feel on the fighter, but it’s actually on myself. I needed to be a little bit more creative on how I prepared him for that.

“Outside of those mistakes on my part, I was pretty happy with the performance overall. I think that said, he just loosened up and we’ll be really ready to go for DC once it’s time.”

The pair will fight at UFC 200 in a highly anticipated rematch on July 9th. How do you see the fight playing out?