At the End of the day, I Will be looked at as a role model – Jon Jones

The pound-for-pound king of UFC, Jon Jones is all set to make his return to the Octagon this weekend at UFC 197. According to the initial plans, Jones was supposed to challenge his long-time rival Daniel Cormier for the UFC Lightweight championship but an injury to Cormier brought in Ovince Saint Preux into the mix.

Jones and OSP will fight it out for the interim Lightweight championship at the event and it is expected to be a stellar bout between the two. Ahead of this much-awaited fight, Jones recently got into a conference call with the media and shared his thoughts about a string of topics. Below are the highlights from the conference.

On being a role model for the younger fighters

I think at the end of the day when my story is written and it’s all done that I will be looked at as a role model because of the way that I come out of all this stuff. You know what I mean? My story is far from over. That’s something that I’m very well aware of. Right now I’m in the process of writing a book and right now I’m only at the beginning of a book story. So the little hiccups, they don’t define me.

I just know that I have a lot of work to do to make sure that the ending is something powerful; something that people can look up to, people can draw strength on in the future. People will be able to say Jon Jones went through a lot, “Man that kid struggled with drugs and partying insane and money and all these things came at him at such a young age, and he was a little bit of a wild boy but look at him today.” I just can’t wait for that part of the story to start to take place.

I’m not there yet. It’s going to take time but it’ll come, mark my words.

The biggest lesson from all his troubles

My biggest lessons are that I would sum up the way I look at the last few months of my life. It’s in life you’re going to have ups and downs and the key to surviving is to know when you’re down that that’s not who you are, that that’s a temporary state, a temporary situation.

I think a lot of times when we’re down we start to look at our self and at this lower self-esteem and this lower version of our self and we start to believe that this is who we actually are. This is the way that our life is.

There’s a quote that says, “Having a bad day doesn’t mean you have a bad life”. So just always believe in the good, the good values, the qualities that you have, the good times that you have in your future coming to you, just believe in the good, believe in that higher version of yourself, never forget, I think those are those qualities, quality things about yourself.

And continue to move forward, fight through that adversity and move forward and try to do things better and not find yourself in one of those down moments again.

So that’s me. I’ve been through a lot of stuff, but I found myself unbroken by the end of it because I’ve had many low moments and I’ve had many high moments. But I believe in the better moments, the finer things, so that’s it, move forward through the ups and the downs.

How Weightlifting made him stronger

I added a ton of muscle. I was 240 at one point just a few months ago, lifting all types of crazy weight and now I’m about 218 and still great. I feel a lot like the athlete I was before. I think I punch harder and I’m a little more explosive. Before I would be hesitant about shooting on heavyweights because I was saying oh man if I don’t finish this shot he’s going to front headlock me and he’s going to tire me out.

Now I just shoot on the people because I have the power to finish my shot on pretty much everyone. So I’m just a lot more confident. I’m more confident in my ability to muscle certain things where before everything had to be about timing. Everything had to be about finesse and I still have the timing and finesse but I have a little bit of strength to back some things up. So it’s enhanced my confidence.

About the support of his fans

The fan support means so much to me. I have really, really felt supporters and I definitely haven’t always been an athlete to make it easy to support. I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not proud of.

But people see through the good of me and they believe in that and they stand by me and I’m just so grateful for all my fans. I love them all so much. They motivate me to be better and to try to improve on my character. I’m just very grateful for everyone, sincerely.

Cutting his weight

I’ve had a nutritionist with me for the last ten weeks we’ve been together.

I haven’t really had a cheat meal in a long time and right now I feel really, really good, really good. But lifting right now with 218, I usually show up to fight week at 225 so right now I’m definitely ahead of schedule.

A lot of people said powerlifting is going to make Jon have a bad weight cut and then I heard a lot of people say powerlifting is going to mess with Jon’s flexibility and then I heard people say powerlifting is going to mess with his cardio.

So, me knowing what the assumption was, I made it a point to really attack those things. So right now I’m ahead of the game in my weight cut, my cardio I believe is better than it’s ever been, and my flexibility, I mean I’m doing everything that I was doing before so, yes, feel good.

About Ovince being a short notice opponent

I think I met Ovince backstage a few years ago. Outside of that I honestly had never see him fight once. Not even a highlight video.

So when the fight got announced I totally flipped a switch and I’ve been researching Ovince nonstop and I feel like I know the guy even though I’ve never really had a conversation with him. I’ve watched all of his past fights; I’ve watched almost every interview I could find on him. I know things about his background; I know pretty much everything about him that I could find on the Internet. So I feel pretty comfortable with him as an opponent now and I’ve caught to knowing things about him.

Watch UFC 197: JONES vs. SAINT PREUX @ 7:30AM ON SUNDAY, 24th APRIL 2016, LIVE AND EXCLUSIVELY ON SONY ESPN & SONY ESPN HD