After vacating his UFC light heavyweight championship Jon Jones has been on the sidelines preparing to enter the UFC’s heavyweight division. After Francis Ngannou claimed the heavyweight title with a win over Stipe Miocic in March, it appeared as though Ngannou vs. Jones might serve as ‘Bones’ heavyweight debut.
However, with both Jones and Ngannou wanting premium pay to face each other, the UFC has balked on that match-up and is instead hosting an interim UFC heavyweight title fight this weekend at UFC 265 between Ciryl Gane and Derrick Lewis.
White, who has made it clear that the UFC will not pay the kind of figures they claim Jones is asking for, recently appeared on the Full Send podcast. On that show he talked about what options Jones has going forwards.
“Me and Jones have had that type of relationship his whole career. When he’s ready to fight we are ready to go. He’s talking about fighting at heavyweight,” he said (ht bjpenn.com). “But, in the heavyweight division right now we are going back to Houston, Derrick Lewis is taking on Ciryl Gane and whoever wins that fight will fight Francis Ngannou. Whoever wins that fight, if Jon Jones wants to come back he can fight one of them. Or, he can fight Stipe Miocic. Stipe has accepted that fight and will take that fight.”
White added that Jones won’t fight until next year.
Miocic has been a frustrated figure as of late. Last week he sent a message to ONE Championship on Instagram, stating he was fed up with not getting an immediate rematch against Ngannou for the UFC heavyweight title. Miocic expressed his confusion at this considering his record breaking achievements in the division and that Daniel Cormier was able to score an immediate rematch against him.
In May Jones went on record saying he was not going to fight Miocic. During that string of since deleted tweets Jones said he was only interested in facing Ngannou.
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