Brandon Vera: "We'll See If He[Jon Jones] Is Ready For The Truth"

Brandon Vera lays it all out there and what he expects to accomplish against Jon Jones this weekend during the UFC on Versus main event:

"We've been studying for a while, and his biggest weakness is his inexperience. That's the only X factor in this game. Everything else, he's almost like a seasoned vet, so we're going to try to look for holes and exploit them. His game is tight. His striking is good. His defense is good. His footwork's good. I can’t prepare for his spinning elbows or his spinning kicks and stuff like that. There’s just no way," Vera says. "The same goes for him training and preparing to fight me. Nobody kicks as hard as I do. Nobody kicks with the malicious intent that I do and he hasn’t gone against anybody whose Thai clinch is as good as mine. We’re both going to have to find out a lot about each other that night."

For some reason – I don't know when or where it started – I started worrying about defending the takedown so much. I don't know. I started becoming a standup fighter. Everybody wanted to see me bang, so I just started defending takedowns all the time. My standup has suffered because of it. Instead of throwing – instead of committing all my combinations or committing all my punches and kicks, I'm holding back. I’m thinking ‘Maybe this guy's going to shoot,’ or ‘Maybe this might happen,’ and I forgot that I am a brown belt under Lloyd Irvin. I was doing jiu-jitsu before I started fighting; I love being on the ground," Vera says. "I'm better on my back than I am on top of you. I submit people all day now that I'm training and I started getting back to my jiu-jitsu roots. So if somebody takes me to the ground, you could end up seeing somebody get submitted. I'm back on my jiu-jitsu game, along with my Muay Thai game, and I'm not concentrating so much on defending the takedown anymore. You just might see a submission if Jones takes me down."

He's actually a lot further along in his mental game than I was when I was in his position, but if he believes what people are saying about him – that he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ, then he’s going to have a long way to fall back down to earth when I knock him out. We’ll see if he’s ready for ‘The Truth.’"

HT: UFC.com

SBN coverage of UFC on Versus: Vera vs. Jones