Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week or so, you’re probably aware of the situation between UFC president Dana White and featherweight champion Conor McGregor. In case you’ve been living under that rock, I’ll give you a quick synopsis.
McGregor didn’t want to do the full promotional tour for his UFC 200 main event bout against Nate Diaz at 170 pounds. After losing to Diaz at UFC 196 in March, McGregor wanted more time to train for the rematch and to do less promoting. White told him that wasn’t acceptable and that no one gets out of promoting. Since the disagreement, McGregor has retired, then unretired and White has pulled him from the UFC 200 card.
The biggest question for White has been finding a replacement main event that carries as much excitement as McGregor-Diaz. On Wednesday morning, he finally announced that there will be a light heavyweight unification bout between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier as the new main event at UFC 200.
Jones is coming off of a unanimous decision victory over Ovince Saint-Preux at UFC 197 after Saint-Preux stepped in to replace Cormier who suffered an injury in training. Jones and Cormier fought at UFC 182 with Jones coming out with a unanimous decision.
Cormier hasn’t fought since October when he came away with a split decision victory over Alexander Gustafsson. By the time he steps into the ring in July, just over nine months would’ve passed since his last fight. That could lead to some rust early on in the fight as he tries to get his timing back.
Jones just fought on April 23 and the bout against Cormier is just 11 weeks away. Normally, that would be tough to do, but his UFC 197 bout against Saint-Preux was his first fight since January 3, 2015 so it could be an advantage for Jones to take this fight so quickly as he’s knocked some of the rust off.
As a UFC fan, it’s tough losing McGregor from this card, but I’m excited about the replacement main event. Hopefully Jones and Cormier will produce a great fight.