Jon Jones decided to crawl towards his UFC opponents after having nightmares of being knocked out in a fight.
Jones, 35, makes his fighting return this Saturday after three years away from the octagon as he faces Ciryl Gane for the vacant UFC heavyweight title in Las Vegas. 'Bones' was one of the first fighters to crawl towards his opponent at the start of the fight, with the likes of fellow UFC star Conor McGregor also later copying the bizarre move.
After Jones became the youngest champion in UFC history by knocking out Shogun Rua in 2011, he was scheduled to make the first defence of his title just months later against another MMA legend in 'Rampage' Jackson. Jones kept having nightmares that he would be knocked out in the first 30 seconds of the fight, which is what prompted him to crawl towards Jackson as the fight got underway.
“I kept having these nightmares before fighting Rampage Jackson that I would get knocked out, no matter how the fight played out I would get knocked out in the first 30 seconds. One scenario he ran at me threw an overhand right, the other was a right uppercut and another dream was a left hook. I couldn’t avoid this inevitable knockout that I was going to experience," Jones told Steve-O's Wild Ride.
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“On fight night, I felt like I was going to get knocked out. So I had this super deep prayer and touched my body from my head to my toes. As I was praying and touching myself, I noticed looking at myself that I was covered in white feathers. It was very real to me, there were like small feathers in between my fingers and they came up to my neck. I felt I was this fighting thing that wasn’t earthly."
“I was able to hang on to this feeling and illusion of myself all the way through my walk to the cage. I felt like I walked into that Rampage Jackson fight as the featherman for the first time. My idea to crawl towards him was the only thing that hadn’t happened in my nightmares because every fight starts on the fight."
"Something was just like ‘Get on your knees and crawl up to him’, then automatically the dream voids itself of him knocking you out immediately. So I did that and got to fight in this kind of alter-ego state, it was super powerful."
The unified rules of MMA mean that Jones' opponents are unable to kick him in the head whilst he crawls towards them. Jones was able to overcome his nightmares as he tapped out Jackson in the fourth round of their title fight and 'Bones' has kept up his tradition of crawling towards his opponents at the start of a fight ever since.
