UFC 140 Results: Breakdown of What a Fighter Needs to Beat Jon Jones

UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones has proven to be an amazing fighter, but he can be beat.

How exactly?

Lyoto Machida demonstrated a very important lesson: Jon Jones can be hit and stumbled.

Before the Machida fight, we never saw Jones really ever take a hit. Feared strikers Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson couldn't hit Jones—but Machida could.

This means that, for a fighter to be successful against Jones, he has to have diverse striking and has to attack from different angles, like Machida did.

If a fighter throws hands only, like Rampage, he'll lose.

Machida did his best when he went on the offensive and got on the inside with an aggressive flurry of strikes. The hypothetical fighter to beat Jones will have to be a very aggressive striker who can constantly put pressure on Jones. He must also have the conditioning to do that throughout the fight.

Concerning grappling, the fighter to beat Jones will need a very solid wrestling base to avoid getting taken down.

Jones has great takedowns and scary ground-and-pound with vicious elbows. It took only one takedown and elbow for Jones to cut Machida's forehead open.

So, not only will a fighter need takedown defense to beat Jones, he'll need either great submissions off his back or a very good scrambling ability. This will enable him to get back up once Jones takes him to the mat.

This hypothetical fighter will also need a strong chin as to not get rocked by any of Jones' unorthodox strikes (such as his famous back-elbow).

Unfortunately for Jones haters, a fighter with all of these attributes doesn't exist at light heavyweight (at least not yet). Jones should be ruling the division with an iron fist for quite some time.