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Terrifying, if you're a fighter in the UFC's 205-pound division, where Jones threatens to make a significant run if he can defeat Matt Hamill this Saturday in the main event fight of "The Ultimate Fighter" season 10 live finale. A throwback, if you pine for the days where MMA fighters largely trained themselves, toiling in garages and basements, trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.
"I had to kind of teach myself how to fight and teach myself how to strike," Jones told me last week, when I interviewed him for The Rumble. "Seeing people knock others out with a spinning back fist was just cool to me, so I was just like 'Man, I'm going to practice this weird stuff, here in my living room in front of this mirror.' Now, it's like I can't break away from it and I don't want to break away from it."
Jones has been able to parlay that "weird stuff" – as well as his freakish athleticism and background as a junior college national wrestling champion – into a 9-0 professional MMA record and some of the more innovative offense you're ever going to see inside the cage.
He first caught the eye of a nationwide audience at UFC 94, when he dropped respected veteran Stephan Bonnar with an unorthodox spinning back elbow early in their fight and then spent the rest of the 15-minute affair tossing Bonnar all over the Octagon with his stellar Greco-Roman throws. From there, Jones sprinted into UFC 100, where he silenced critics openly questioning his ability to finish fights by choking out Jake O'Brien in the second round.
From the outside looking in, Jones appears to be the total package. He excels inside the cage and is engaging, humble and friendly outside of it. It takes all of 20 seconds of conversation with him to realize that – if he can keep up his winning ways – he's going to be a star.
But this weekend marks a big test for him. He'll be facing Hamill in his first-ever UFC main event. He'll be stepping in with a guy whose strength and wrestling ability might be able to give him some trouble, even though Jones contends he'll be able to match or exceed Hamill's wrestling ability.
Indeed, Jones seems to have made all right moves to prepare for the fight. He recently departed his New York-based Team Bombsquad – where he used to actually, literally train in a barn – and spent time at Montreal's Tristar gym, where welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre does work, and also joined up with renowned trainer Greg Jackson in New Mexico.
As for fighting in the main event of a nationally televised show? No big deal.
"All the attention and all the media that was around UFC 100, that kind of scared me," he confided to me last week. "But that prepared me for this."
Jones is already something of a darling in MMA circles. He graces the cover of Fight! Magazine this month and at 22 years old it's nothing short of remarkable what he's accomplished in just two years of training in mixed martial arts.
Some fear that might go to his head, but those people don't seem to know Jones. He seems to have no problem staying grounded and keeping it positive. He also doesn't overestimate his place in the sport.
"Coming to Greg Jackson's and getting beat up all the time?" He said. "That helps."
Whatever happens, this weekend's fight with Matt Hamill will go a long way to showing us just how far Jones can go and how high he can soar.
Chad Dundas is the Lead MMA Editor for the Sporting News and writes a weekly mixed martial arts column for CraveOnline. He lives in Missoula, MT.
