Jon Jones returned to action after a one year suspension from USADA to defeat Daniel Cormier a second time at UFC 214 to become a two time UFC Light Heavyweight Champion.
However, the new champions coach in Mike Winklejohn recently revealed that Jones was actually injured just two days before the event.
"I'll share with you [that] a couple nights before the fight, yeah, he couldn't lift his arm -- he had hurt it wrestling," Winkeljohn said to Submission Radio. "He wrestled a little too hard with his partner, maybe a lack of warm-ups, I'm not sure, but it was kind of scary. It was one of those situations where when I was warming him up I had asked the coaches and they had agreed, they were ahead of me on this, that we shouldn't be doing a lot of wrestling because I didn't want Jon to have to underhook and lift with his one arm because that could potentially cause it to be hurt again and mess his mindset up. I wanted to keep that out of it hopefully so that way if it got re-injured during the fight, the adrenaline would take over. It was kind of scary, [and] nobody knew about it, there was an injury behind the scenes.?
The severity of Jones injury is unknown at this time, but he was well enough to win the gold back at UFC 214.
Coach Winklejohn credits Jones mindset for both overcoming the win and for winning the gold back.
"He basically didn't say anything other than that he's fighting," Winkeljohn said. "He didn't say anything about it. Let me put it that way. No matter how much it hurt, if it was tingling, if it felt weak, Jon didn't say anything. He just went and fought. That's why Jon Jones is the champion. He has that mindset."
Jones doesn?t have a title defense lined up at the moment, but he has issued a challenge to former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar.