At the DWCS Season 4 Week 3 post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White offered some clarity on what’s next for the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions.
Jon Jones is no longer light heavyweight champion, having less formally vacated it via Twitter this weekend.
It’s official, yeah, said White, as transcribed by Mike Heck for MMA Fighting. While we were here, I actually went live on SportsCenter and announced it between one of the fights and announced all of that.
Dominick Reyes and Jan Blachowicz will fight for the belt at UFC 253 on September 26.
Yeah, it’s for the vacant title, said White.
As for Jones, White was not bitter.
I know that Jon, right now, wants to take time to do things that he wants to do, said White. If you follow him on Instagram, he’s been doing a lot of shooting, likes to work with these attack dogs, lifts a lot of weights, and I think he’s having fun living his life a little bit. I think, when this whole heavyweight thing plays out, we’ll see what works for him. I don’t know, exactly, what the right outcome is gonna be but we’ll see.
“Obviously, you can see he’s been tweeting. He has an interest in fighting at heavyweight,” said White, as transcribed by Nolan King and Ken Hathaway for MMA Junkie. “He doesn’t know when. He doesn’t know who. I think he’s going to just take some time right now and do some of the things he wants to do outside of the Octagon. When the time is right, he’ll step in and possibly fight at heavyweight.
[Miocic vs. Ngannou] is definitely the fight that’s going to happen at heavyweight now. Francis Ngannou had earned that title shot. Then we’ll see what happens. We had a matchmaking meeting today. A lot of the top four or five guys are laid out for fights coming up in the fall. We’ll see what Jon Jones’ timing is to come back and who makes sense for him.
Listen, he is the longtime light heavyweight champion. In my opinion, he is the greatest of all time. If he wants to come back and take a shot at the heavyweight championship, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. But he can’t jump in front of Francis Ngannou right now.
I say it all the time. He’s the GOAT. If you look at his career right now, he’s like 26-1. He’s 27-0. He’s never been beaten in the Octagon. He’s fought the who’s who of the sport. He went through murderers’ row at 205 pounds and destroyed everybody. He’s the greatest of all time.
