Craig Jones shared plenty of interesting tidbits during the media week ahead of UFC 284 and the big main event featuring Alex Volkanovski and Islam Makhachev.
And Jones isn’t shying away from controversial opinions. While he agrees with Makhachev that there are many fraudulent black belts in BJJ, he doesn’t think much of Sambo.
“He’s just good at holding people down like he submits people, but I don’t think he has good submissions, you know what I mean? ” – Jones explained ahead of the event.
Many BJJ fans questioned if this was really true or just another way to promote Volkanovski and tease his opponent. In the aftermath of UFC 284, Jones did another interview with Submission Radio elaborating on his opinions further:
“I mean, they think Dagestan is doing something no one else is doing.”
“At the end of the day, a submission is a submission and the best submission artists aren’t in Dagestan.”
“They submit people because they exhaust people really. But like, it’s not the best submissions in the world. Obviously they’re very good at what they do, but in a pure submission sense, you know, I mean, there’s room for jiu-jitsu there.”
“And also, like, obviously they really get a whole new people down on the ground. But the best guys at holding people down, are folk style wrestlers, which folk style is only done in America.”
“The best submissions are (from) jiu-jitsu guys, the best guys at pinning people are folk style guys. But obviously, what Dagestan do so well is the take downs combined with the judo, which I think makes this style of freestyle wrestling.”
“I have a lot of respect for what those guys do, but you can’t pretend that in some far off corner of the world, they’ve perfected the art of grappling.”
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– Editorial staff of BJJDOC
