Craig Jones went on a recent episode of FloGrappling’s podcast with Mikey Musumeci and made an incredibly bold claim, that he would never pull guard again. Jones is known for his elite level leglock proficiency and his fantastic work from Z guard, so it stands to reason that pulling guard might well be the optimum strategy for him to find success in competition. He has been working on his wrestling a lot over the last few years and trained with NCAA champion, making noticeable improvements to his standing grappling ability over that time. Of course, there’s a clear difference between the training mats and the fields of competition, so he has still been pulling guard as and when it is necessary.
Now it seems as though Jones is actually completely done with pulling guard as he has claimed that he will never do it in competition again. He’ll be facing Pedro Marinho for the Who’s Number One Light-Heavyweight title in less than a week so it’ll be interesting to see if he sticks to his guns in his first fight since making the bold claim:
“I will never pull guard. Win or lose, even if I get slammed into the ground, I will never pull guard again.”
Mikey Musumeci was also present in the interview by video call and he seemed genuinely shocked and more than a little doubtful of Jones’ claim, replying:
“Even in ADCC, against a top wrestler?”
But Craig Jones was adamant that his days of being the guard puller were firmly behind him. Instead he has a slightly approach that he believes will see him through to success even if he is against a superior wrestler:
“Yes. My hope is that they get tired taking me down and that’s when I strike.” answered Jones.
Craig Jones shared the portion of his interview on the FloGrappling podcast where he vows to never pull guard again in a post to his official Instagram account:
