Sunday, February 6, 2011

Jon Jones To Learn Portuguese In Preparation For UFC 128 Title Bout

(photo via sherdog.com)


Most everyone in the MMA blogosphere is familiar with Jonny "Bones" Jones' use of Twitter to help himself prepare for his fights. Prior to his UFC 126 fight with Ryan Bader, he would read the tweets of Bader himself, his training partners, coaches, and probably his parents. Now it looks like he'll be taking it to the next level to prepare for UFC light-heavyweight champ, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.

"I really feel I had a lot of success using Twitter to prepare myself for Bader, but Shogun presents a lot of problems, and one of them is that English is not his native language. So to help get myself ready I'm going to learn Portuguese. As soon as I got done with the Bader fight, I got on my laptop and ordered Rosetta Stone from Amazon, rush-delivery. Hopefully it gets here by Monday and Coach Jackson and I can begin. No down-time for me."

Jones went into further detail. "I know a month and a half is a short amount of time to learn a new language, but everyone here at Team Jackson says I learn new things so fast that I don't foresee a problem." Jones also says he plans on flying to Curitiba, Brazil (the hometown of "Shogun" Rua) to talk with Rua's friends and family, saying "You can only learn so much from Twitter posts" and that he "needs to go straight to the source." Jones went on to compare his preparation methods to actors like Daniel Day-Lewis, who are proponents of method acting. "Those method guys totally immerse themselves in their characters, and that's kind of what I do pre-fight. I draw a lot of inspiration from that."

Jones declined any further questions, saying "From now on until after the fight, I'm not going to speak any more English. Obrigado. Gracas a Deus."

Note: Not a real interview. Totally fictional.

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