Jon Jones talked to The Schmo recently and touched on a few interesting subjects, like partying with Tommy McMillen and what he thought about Alex Pereira vs. Sergei Pavlovich. The former UFC light heavyweight and heavyweight champion also talked a little about his protege, Gable Steveson.
Check out that interview below.
On the subject of Steveson, Jones reported that the Steveson was “doing great” after his shock KO loss to Sean Sharaf at UFC 331.
“Gable’s doing really, really awesome,” Jones continued.
“I believe in Gable. I believe in the man and the person that he is. I’m excited for him to just clear things up moving forward in his life and his personal life. And as far as the athlete that Gable is, he’s extraordinary. He’s absolutely extraordinary.”
Jones also said that his star pupil “deserves” to rebound from that KO loss.
“He deserves good things. He does all the right things. He’s an awesome father and an awesome husband and a great son. I see the way that he treats the people around him and he deserves success.”
I’ll get into that in a little.
Jones also compared Steveson’s rocky start to life in UFC to a famous stumble by the sport’s G.O.A.T Georges St-Pierre.
“And if you think about it, all the great fighters have had knockouts and losses. I mean, GSP vs. Matt Serra. There’s just so many examples. [Steveson’s] in the right head space. He’s right back to training. I feel like, as a team, we need to add a lot more sparring, and we have our little things that we can work on as a team, but he’s in great hands. He has great mentors and a great team around him, and we believe he is going to pull back in an amazing way.”
Steveson took up MMA after some exploratory moves into the NFL and WWE. Neither of those venues ended up being a fit for him, though (since he wasn’t good enough). The former freestyle Olympic wrestling champ looked at home in low level MMA, after he wrecked his first three opponents with first round TKOs.
After winning at Mike Perry’s Dirty Boxing Championship 4 in October, 2025, Steveson was signed to UFC. He was able to bypass both Contender Series and TUF, so you know he must have been given a premium contract.
In his first fight Stevesongot throughElisha Ellison, but not without taking a few shots. Despite not looking great in that fight, he was made a ridiculous -2700 favorite for the Sharaf fight.
In the build up to the Sharaf fight, Steveson did something quite special. He managed to unite a large swathe of MMA fandom into rooting against him. We’ve seen MMA fans ignore and excuse plenty of past controversies involving fighters. However, when Sharaf went after Steveson during his pre-fight press conference, which included him calling Steveson a “rapist”, Sharaf was met with applause both in person and online.
Sharaf’s comments related to when Steveson, and his teammate Dylan Martinez, were arrested on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct on June 15, 2019. In December a county attorney in Minnesota failed to charge Steveson, citing a lack of evidence. While announcing this, the county attorney also mentioned that they wish that Minnesota had similar laws to neighboring Wisconsin, where there is more discretion to charge suspects in connection to sexual assaults involving intoxicated victims.
