Jon Jones has fired back at Kamaru Usman after Usman said Brock Lesnar would likely beat Jones in a pure wrestling match. ‘Bones’ Jones did not need many words to make his point.
During a recent episode of the Pound 4 Pound podcast with Henry Cejudo, Usman was asked to pick a winner in a hypothetical wrestling matchup between Jones and Lesnar. Usman went with Lesnar, pointing to the former UFC heavyweight champion’s size and the difficulty of repeatedly attacking underneath a man built like him.
Jon Jones Throws Shade at Kamaru Usman Over Brock Lesnar Wrestling Debate
Usman’s full explanation made his logic clear. He said that, hypothetically, he would pick Lesnar because of “the sheer size of Brock Lesnar,” while adding that Jones would probably be “a little more offensive.” He then said he did not see Jones having much success trying to get under a man as big as Lesnar and taking him down several times. The comment came during a conversation framed around a wrestling setting rather than an MMA fight, the discussion was about freestyle, such as in RAF, or Greco-Roman rules and not an MMA matchup.
Jones soon answered on social media, and his response matched the kind of line that usually spreads fast in MMA circles. Jones wrote to Usman: “I’m getting my hand raised against you and Brock in the same night.”
In pure wrestling terms, Lesnar owns the deepest college résumé of the group. He won the 2000 NCAA Division I heavyweight title and finished his amateur career with a 106-5 record at Minnesota, while Jones was a New York state champion, a National Junior College Athletic Association champion at Iowa Central, and a Junior Greco-Roman regional winner before moving fully into MMA.
Usman also brings a strong base to the discussion, having won the 2010 NCAA Division II national title at 174 pounds after becoming a three-time Division II All-American and a U.S.
Lesnar is listed at 6-foot-3 and around 286 pounds by WWE, Jones is widely listed at 6-foot-4, at 238 pounds but spent most of his career competing at light heavyweight’s 205 limit.
The debate itself is easy to understand. Lesnar has long been tied to high-level wrestling credentials and carries a major size advantage over most fighters Jones has faced, which is why Usman leaned in that direction. On the other side, Jones has built much of his reputation on timing, control, trips, clinch work, and problem-solving against elite opponents, so it is not surprising that he rejected the idea that Lesnar would simply overpower him in a wrestling-only setting.
For now, this remains talk, not a booked contest. There is no announced wrestling match between Jones and Lesnar, and the whole exchange grew from a hypothetical posed on a podcast before moving onto social media. Still, it landed because it brought together three big names from combat sports history: Jones, a former two-division UFC champion; Usman, a former UFC welterweight champion; and Lesnar, whose NCAA and UFC background still gives him weight in any fantasy wrestling argument.
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