With UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier‘s succesful title defense against Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 192 in the books, the UFC is left with an open question as to Cormier’s next opponent will be Ryan Bader or Jon Jones?
Bader is on the best run of his UFC career, and beating the inconsistent but tough Rashad Evans on the undercard of UFC 192 gave him five wins in a row. With Jones out of the picture, the next title shot would be his. To boot, Bader vs Cormier has been in the works before and Bader has been a good soldier, both in trying to sell the fight and in staying with the program of the UFC when the fight didn’t happen.
Check out the video from MMA Digest where UFC President Dana White speaks about the Jon Jones situation. This was filmed in the May timeframe, and Dana seems to have little optimism for the situation. He speaks of jail-time and lawsuits and about how Jon Jones needs to show he has “his head on straight” before coming back.
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Though the situation looked bleak for Jones back then, he is back in the picture at the UFC. His trial ended in a short and succinct manner, and he avoided jail time. Whether Jones has satisfied White’s standards for return needs to be seen, but he has made his first tentative returns to social media after basically falling off the grid.
One Tweet of his was a simple video of him saying “I think I miss it”. The video shown here also features White saying Jones would receive an instant title shot as soon as he returns. None of the boxing commissions in the country have stepped up or rather, put themselves on the line by suspending Jones so he is free to fight.
He has to just wink at Dana and say “I’m alright” and he will be back. But the UFC has been looking the other way for a long time if the fighter is a money draw. Certainly when Chuck Liddell passed out on the television show “Good Morning Texas” a few years back after allegedly being up all night partying, the UFC’s own conduct clause was probably breeched on several points, but we saw Chuck again fighting as soon as they could roll him out. And that is what they will do with Jones.
The right thing to do is probably to program Cormier vs Bader right now and let Jones “prove” himself and stay out of trouble for another few months. Cormier would likely enter that bout a betting favorite, and one more win before having to face Jon Jones again would help bolster Cormier’s image. Should Bader win, he can easily be packaged as a better fighter than he was back in February of 2011 when he lost to Jones in the second round.
The fact is that the UFC needs Jones back after that, because the next grouping of top Light Heavyweights features the likes of Gustafsson, who lost another title fight, Anthony Johnson and Glover Teixeira. Bader or Cormier as champion could fight all three of those men in succession and it wont add up to the haul they will all make for fighting a returning Jones.
