You want to talk about great fighters who had great years? Want to talk about breakneck paces akin to what Merab Dvalishvili put himself through in 2025 (with, at the end, mixed results)? You want to see a snapshot of dominance confined to one 12-month period, tacking on title defenses as the pages of the calendar go flipping by? Then take a look at the year Jon Jones had in 2011.
At the beginning of 2011 he was still just a fresh-faced contender still stuck on the undercard whenever he was added to numbered UFC events. By the time he stepped into the cage for the last time that year — on Dec. 10, 2011, exactly 14 years ago today — he stood alone atop the light heavyweight division, unquestionably the best 205-pounder on the planet.
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The final tally for that year looked like this: Four fights, four wins, four finishes. Three of those were UFC title fights. Two of them were UFC title defenses. Three of the four opponents he faced that year had at one point been UFC champs themselves. Exactly zero of the fights seemed the least bit competitive.
By the close of that year it seemed like we were witnessing the early stages of a historic run. And we were, even if we didn’t know yet how many strange detours lay ahead, or how the author of that history would prove to be the only real threat to it.
That memorable year began for Jones in early February. Fresh off a quick knockout victory over Vladimir Matyushenko in the main event of a rare Sunday UFC event that aired on the short-lived Versus network, Jones took on Ryan Bader at UFC 126. The fight was billed as a meeting between two (essentially) unbeaten young light heavyweights, both hoping to be the future of the division. Bader had won a season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and then reeled off four straight wins in the UFC. By the time he faced Jones, they had almost identical records.
But the fight did not turn out to be an evenly matched contest among peers. Jones blazed through Bader, snatching a second-round guillotine choke while hardly breaking a sweat. It wasn’t until after the fight that the drama really picked up.
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Standing in the cage after the win, Jones was informed that Rashad Evans, his Jackson-Wink teammate at the time, had been forced to pull out of a light heavyweight title fight against then-champ Mauricio “Shogun” Rua due to an injury. The fight was just barely more than a month away, but if he wanted it, the title shot was his.
Jones wanted it. The look on his face right then was caught somewhere between comical surprise and a kid on Christmas morning. He was still six months from his 24th birthday, had been a pro fighter for just three years, and now he was being offered a UFC title shot against a man who was already an MMA legend.
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The version of Jones who showed up in Newark, N.J. that March was a man who seemed very much ready to be a star. He needed no convincing that he deserved it. I remember watching Jones walk his dog through the lobby of the hotel, wearing sunglasses indoors, smiling easily as though he wasn’t just a couple days away from fighting the terror who won the 2005 PRIDE Middleweight Grand Prix. There was an air of inevitability about him. And on fight night we found out why.
The thing it’s easy to forgot about Jones now, after years of sporadic activity marked by far more tweeting than fighting, is how unpredictable and dynamic he could be. He began that fight against Rua with a jumping knee just five seconds in. He followed it with head kicks and spinning kicks and elbows from all angles, with some classic wrestling mixed in to keep Rua off-balance.
As tough as he was even then, Rua was never really in the fight. It was like Jones was fighting at a higher RPM and Rua could never catch up. By the time Jones dropped a weary and wobbled Rua with a left hand to the body, the end seemed merciful.
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With that, Jones became the youngest champion in UFC history. And he wasn’t done wrecking legends of the previous generation, because he went on to systematically dismantle Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in Denver that September, before finishing his year in December with a second title defense against former champ Lyoto Machida in Toronto.
The Machida fight was promised to at least offer something a little different. Here was a karate fighter with a distinctive style that we hadn’t seen Jones face. And, at least initially, Machida did seem like he might find some success with his unique entries and pinpoint strikes. But in the second round the younger, larger Jones took over, backing Machida up against the fence with a standing guillotine choke. Almost before Machida could react, he was unconscious. Jones seemed to feel his body go slack, so then he dropped the former champ onto his face like a bag of dirty laundry.
Jones did not concern himself with ensuring a safe landing for the unconscious Machida.
(Nick Laham via Getty Images)
Was it the most sporting thing to do? No. But as we got to know Jones better, that would seem less and less surprising. His whole thing was dominance, asserting himself as one-of-one, far and above the other mere mortals who populated the UFC’s light heavyweight class. And to think he’d started the year as such a nice boy. Or at least that was the vibe he was going for.
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Jones would never again match that pace. After that he never fought more than twice in any given year. Some of that was inevitable. As he cleaned out the division, there were simply fewer and fewer people who it made sense for him to fight. Then again, he also did a fair amount of what Daniel Cormier would later describe as “disqualifying himself from competition.” So yeah, that’s a part of the story too.
But never before or since have we seen a year quite like that in the UFC. Jones started 2011 as a contender whose time seemed to be coming but had not quite arrived. He ended it as the king of the division, slayer of MMA legends, well on his way to becoming the best the 205-pound weight class had ever seen.
His will never be a simple or uncomplicated legacy. Too much has already happened. But that year when he went from heir-in-waiting to peerless champion will also be a part of it. And at least so far, no one’s proven they can do it any better within the scope of just one trip around the sun.
