The best and worst from UFC 239: Jones vs. Santos

#2 Worst: Rockhold’s move to 205lbs backfires big time

Luke Rockhold's future should be in question after his loss to Jan Blachowicz

Jon Jones’s last two challengers – Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos – both found themselves in line for a shot at the UFC Light-Heavyweight title after moving up to 205lbs following middling runs at 185lbs. So, the logic went, surely a former UFC Middleweight champion like Luke Rockhold could find success in the apparently weaker weight class too. Well, apparently not.

Faced with Jan Blachowicz – a talented fighter but not one that’d be recognised as a top five contender at 205lbs – Rockhold was simply outgunned. He was never able to impose himself physically on the Polish fighter as he’d done to so many opponents at 185lbs, and despite landing some good strikes, he was badly hurt in the first round by a Blachowicz high kick.

The second round went even worse for him, as Blachowicz really began to open up with his strikes and once again exposed Rockhold’s difficulties with defending the left hook, as he landed a truly savage blow to knock the former champion out and according to Dana White, leave him with a broken jaw too.

Where Rockhold goes from here is difficult to say; White has suggested retirement and while that seems premature, he could probably do worse things as he does have a lucrative modelling career on the side and clearly isn’t cut out to challenge for UFC gold again despite his physical talents. Rockhold had talked up a possible Jon Jones fight this week but that talk is out of the window now – and hopefully for his sake this loss knocks some of the overconfidence out of him too.