Can pound-for-pound king Jon Jones drop his wrestling-heavy style and shock the…

You really think Makhachev’s never been touched on the feet just because he keeps opponents in clinch for the choke? I've seen the replays—he gives up two, three inches every single round to get the angle. That’s not sambo mastery, that’s pocket pool; he’s playing chess but missing that the board is tilted upward on purpose. Jones doesn’t need to show horse-trading credentials at welterweight—he’s already proven he can fire a left oblique from the pocket that stops light-heavy champs cold. The open secret is Makhachev hasn’t faced a southpaw with an equal or better jab since Oblesuk, and Jones spent half his career in the left-stuffed stance waiting for fighters to sell out for the overhand. When he switched southpaw mid-fight against Reyes he didn’t just finish the fight, he kept Reyes guessing until the referee had to decide whether the knockdown was too violent to let it continue—classic Jones pattern: don’t wrestle the issue, make the other guy wrestle his discomfort. Put it this way: Jones’ last six finishes across two divisions averaged 2:09 of cage time. Makhachev’s longest finish streak under the UFC banner clocked 3:22. That gap isn’t style preference, it’s finish authority. Makhachev may never have needed five rounds to finish a welterweight, but Jones has never failed to finish when he walked in as the betting favourite. When you stack the résumés on the table, the question flips: can Makhachev—whose stand-up is still mat-based muscle memory—handle a left hand that bends steel at the elbow, or will the first real groove he’s felt outside his guard spell doom within the opening exchanges?

you ever see two cats in a room both convinced they own the place, tails twitching, fur just barely on end? that’s the snapshot i get when i picture these two sharing one octagon in toronto come august. one’s got that southern-ontario street-fighter swagger polished by a decade of world title belts draped over his gym bag like old winter coats nobody’s bothered to hang up proper; the other’s the kirpan-tucked akali from makhachkala who walked into the UFC and just… started choking people in their own wrestling rooms while they begged for mercy in their native tongues. remember how they met? not in the cage—no, no—backstage at UFC 214 weigh-in week, two guys built like oak fence posts holding the doorway apart while half the security staff pretends not to notice them measuring each other’s earlobes with their eyes. fast-forward three years: makhachev’s guillotined a parade of welterweights who thought sambo meant “secure the top” and forgot you still gotta guard the neck on the way down. jones meanwhile? guy’s been stacking lineal belts like cordwood since before makhachev’s voice cracked, and the only time he’s lost inside the cage it read more like a traffic accident report than a legitimate blemish—still came back the very next fight to put a stamp on the division he supposedly fell from. what intrigues me isn’t whether jones can shut down the sambo threat—old school lefty strikers have walked the same path, selling the jab while their wrestling opponents sold themselves on it. no, the real question is whether makhachev’s southpaw-kryptonite left oblique has an off-switch after he’s already smelled three rounds of cage-top action against someone who refuses to gasp in the clinch. picture it: makhachev’s been told all week his opponent now carries a boxing manual in one pocket and a rulebook in the other; meanwhile jones is over there tuning his guitar between media sessions, same grin that melted daniel cormier’s willpower at 1-23 in their first dance. when those two finally lock gloves at scotiabank arena, the only thing heavier than their hands will be the weight of expectation pressing down on every welterweight belt collector in the building. ah well, we’ll see.

Jones in that welterweight run gonna run the table like it's still 2011 again 🔥💪 but this time the stakes? Makhachev doesn't finish folk, he surgically removes their will and folds them into the mat before they even gasp—ah, heart says it all, backing the Lion from day one, simple as. They reckon Makhachev ain't been taken down? Jon's got 180 IQ on those knees he’ll plant a tripwire between sparring rounds and watch the Dagestani scramble to reset that angle—remember how GSP made BJ look like a tourist in a wrestling room? Same playbook, just faster wheels on the chassis now. And that left oblique? Makhachev's never blinked at a jab combo yet, but Jon's firing thunderbolts disguised as flickers; when you've dropped Reyes in twelve seconds flat while carryin' the luggage of two weight classes, the welterweights start seein’ ghosts where there’s only gloves. Makhachev’s the future—till the future meets a left hand that’s clocked at 52mph and got a PhD in navigation 🤬—Scotiabank gonna need a crane to lift all the belts flyin’ back to Jon after the final bell. Backing them all day.

Jones steps across the cage and lands a clean jab at range that catches Makhachev leaning—whole crowd jumps like it’s 102°F in Toronto. Three minutes later it’s lights out via oblique left, Jones stays southpaw while Makhachev keeps searching for the angle he’s used to hunting from the pocket. Bankroll says keep the 5/6 bookmaker on the finish marker.

The sight of two men circling each other with that same nervous energy you get before a boardroom showdown is exactly what Toronto’s missing right now—only difference being one’s holding a metaphorical spreadsheet and the other a metaphorical garrote. Jones walking into this division carries a résumé thick enough to pad any welterweight’s insurance policy. Two lineal LHW titles stacked like seasoned firewood doesn’t just shout credibility; it screams “I’ve solved weight-cut puzzles you’re still drawing on a napkin.” Makhachev’s reputation, impressive as it is, was forged inside a sambo bubble that still hasn’t faced a southpaw with Jones’ reach-plus-lateral ratio. Four inches of arm extension and a shoulder that tilts like a metronome from jab to oblique every time the footwork shifts—that left hand isn’t a weapon, it’s an angle grinder repurposed for faces. When Jones decides to plant that oblique it arrives at 140 lb not because he’s dropped two weight classes in spirit, but because the physics haven’t caught up to the signature yet. Makhachev’s sambo mastery works best when opponents overcommit; Jones’ left hand freezes the overcommit before the first step. Then there’s the psychological bait. Makhachev’s never needed five rounds because his finishes read like old-school sambo clinics—finish early, leave no trace. Jones, in contrast, has turned “quick finish” into an art form while carrying the psychological weight of multiple pound-for-pound crowns. The welterweights he’s stepping into this cage with have been conditioned to expect a lightning bolt. Makhachev’s challenge isn’t technical; it’s psychological. Will he recognise the oblique mid-exchange before the octagon floor starts echoing his own exhalations? Every time Makhachev has hit the cage so far, his opponents mentally prepared to trade for position; Jones prepares opponents to trade for air. Ultimately the contest reduces to one simple variable: Makhachev’s bottom line is survival inside two minutes; Jones’ bottom line is domination inside one. Survival against Jones’ left oblique isn’t measured in minutes, it’s measured in milliseconds—and milliseconds aren’t something sambo purists bank on.

So Makhachev really does plant his southpaw lead like a tree and then invites every challenger to scale it for the choke, while Jones strolls in wearing the pound-for-pound crown like a second shadow and still finds space to fire that oblique left that looks slower on the scorecard than it does on the CT footage. The twist is that the welterweight division’s future isn’t actually about wrestling vs. sambo—it’s about whether Makhachev’s sambo clock runs out the second he steps into range of a left hand that arrives with the precision of a data-set plot and the impact of a sledgehammer that learned how to land early. I’ve seen fighters unravel from the pocket before; the question isn’t if Jones can unlock Makhachev’s first-round rhythm, but whether Makhachev’s resistance to grappling pressure translates into resistance to striking pressure when the angle flips and the oblique lands square. The tape only shows what happened; the numbers haven’t been invented yet.