Thiago Santos Wants Rematch With Jon Jones

At UFC 239, Thiago Santos was just fingertips away from winning the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship against Jon Jones. Santos injured his knee in the very first round, and that severely impacted his performance for the next four rounds. However, he surprised many by standing toe-to-toe with Jon Jones. Jones, to his credit, wanted to stand up and trade with a black belt in Muay Thai, and did not make much effort to take Thiago to the ground.

In the end, it was Jon that walked away — figuratively — with the title, with a razor thin split decision with over “Maretta”. However, Santos recently spoke with Combate about wanting to fight Jones again, saying it would be a dream to have a rematch with him.

After the fight, it was revealed that Santos had two severely damaged knees, and will be out of action until mid 2020. However, Thiago wants to face Jones upon his return.

“Surely a rematch with him is a dream”, Santos said. “I want to recover from my knee and I sure want to fight him 100 percent, to see how it will be with me being 100 percent, playing my game, doing what we trained. There’s definitely going to be another fight.”

Santos also revealed that he realized he damaged his knee early into the fight, but wanted to go all five rounds with Jon. Thiago also mentioned that he wanted to prove to the fans that he would give one hundred per cent every time he steps into the Octagon.

“I do not know if I shocked the world, but I think I could leave a message, which is what I like to leave, to pass on, I think the most important thing is the legacy we leave”, Santos said. “I think in this fight I left a lot of people happy, I spent a lot of this fight overcoming the difficulties. I think I was having a hard time at the beginning of the fight and a lot of people would have stopped there, so at least a good message, overcoming, resisting, you keep trying, not giving up, I think that message I was able to pass to people.”

The former challenger also mentioned that he would want to have rematch with “Bones” after returning from his injury.

“We want a rematch, yes, but let’s see what the UFC plans will be”, Santos said. “There’s a lot of time left, let’s wait for the scenes from the next chapters.”

Tagged: , , ,

Leave comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.