Being the GOAT requires finding advantages others overlook. According to Joe Rogan, Jon Jones has mastered this art through one of MMA’s most peculiar pre-fight rituals. While talent and training built his legendary career, the heavyweight kingpin’s psychological warfare begins before he steps into the Octagon. His strange but effective ritual—something the UFC commentator has witnessed firsthand—exemplifies the champion’s understanding that true dominance starts in the mind. The ritual isn’t just superstition—it’s a cold and calculated dossier!
“But there’s quite a few different fighters now that utilize mental coaches and some sort of visualization coaching,” Joe Rogan told human behavior expert Chase Hughes on episode #2278 of the JRE podcast. “And then where they have very specific goals in terms of how they want to walk out, what they want, they want to see the whole thing.”
“There’s guys like Jon Jones would famously, like, walk out before the fight. And he would move around the Octagon, he would like to soak it all in when no one was there, before everything. And we would get footage of it sometimes– him just moving around, you know, moving around with his coaches. He just wanted to feel the floor under his feet, he wanted to see the cage, he wanted to get himself in that mindset,” the UFC commentator added.
March 4, 2023, Las Vegas, NV, LAS VEGAS, NV, USA: LAS VEGAS, NV – MARCH 4: Jon Jones prepares to fight Ciryl Gane in their Heavyweight fight during the UFC 285 event at T-Mobile Arena on March 4, 2023, in Las Vegas, NV, USA. Las Vegas, NV USA – ZUMAp175 20230304_zsa_p175_246 Copyright: xLouisxGrassex
Indeed, Jones is a big proponent of visualization. The reigning heavyweight champion has talked about how he visualizes every fight in full, and how he is going to win it, even before stepping into the cage. And what better place to do your visualization than in the Octagon, where you will execute the real deal later? But visualization is just one of the tools in ‘Bones’s toolkit. Along, of course, with intense training and obsessively studying his opponents’ tape, the GOAT contender goes to great lengths to prepare himself mentally for fights.
“I take it so seriously as far as meditation, notes, visualization, preparation, everything. I take it a lot more seriously than a lot of people who play this sport. I’m obsessed with the game that I play,” Jones once told Rogan. But ‘Bones’ is not the only one who swears by the power of visualization.
The 145lbs Jon Jones: Conor McGregor’s testament to the power of visualization
Maybe there is something to this visualization thing! After all, Conor McGregor, the wealthiest, most popular superstar this sport has ever seen, also credits a large part of his success to visualization. “If you can see it here and have the courage enough to speak it, it will happen. If you put out what you truly believe in, it will create the law of attraction and it becomes reality.” The Irishman once famously said.
And not just the broad contours of the overall shape and direction of his career, the former double champ, like Jones, used to visualize his fights before they even happened. Remember his 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo, the most consequential moment of his career? Then you will also remember how ‘Mystic Mac’ went through the exact sequence that led to that knockout in the locker room, before the fight.
That is the power of visualization at its best. But at the moment, however, both McGregor and Jones are stuck in no man’s land. We don’t know when or if Jones will fight Tom Aspinall, and if ‘Mystic Mac’ will ever be back in the Octagon. Perhaps ‘Bones’ cannot visualize a way to beat Aspinall and McGregor cannot visualize a way to beat, well, any top guy anymore.
Let’s hope they keep at it. Otherwise, it would be a shame to ‘visualize’ the two greatest fighters in the history of the sport going out like this. What do you think about Joe Rogan’s revelations about Jon Jones’ pre-fight ritual?
The post “He Wanted To See the Cage” – Joe Rogan Reveals Jon Jones’s Secret ‘Visualization’ Ritual Before Every UFC Fight appeared first on EssentiallySports.
