Nick Piccone
While, for me, Brock Lesnar fighting at UFC 200 is pretty awesome and I can’t wait to see him in the octagon again, the main event of Saturday night’s card was what I was looking forward to the most. Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier was set to take on the Interim Champion, Jon Jones, in the main event of UFC 200 on Saturday night.
It was a dream match of sorts. For the second time. And the entire MMA world was glued to it. Including yours truly.
But late last night, UFC announced Cormier vs. Jones would be pulled from the card due to a “potential anti-doping policy violation” from a test on June 16th. UFC’s vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky said that even though Jones’ potential violation was too close to the fight and they couldn’t conduct a proper review in time. The only option was to cancel the fight.
The UFC was notified tonight that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has informed Jon Jones of a potential anti-doping policy violation stemming from an out-of-competition sample collection on June 16, 2016,” Novitzky said. “USADA, an independent administrator of the anti-doping policy, will handle results management and appropriate adjudication of this case. It is important to note that under the UFC anti-doping policy, there is a full, fair legal review process that is afforded to all athletes before any sanctions are imposed. However, because Jones was scheduled to fight Cormier this coming Saturday, July 9 in Vegas, there is insufficient time for a full review before the scheduled bout, and therefore the bout has been removed from the fight card.
It makes sense to remove the fight from the card given the fact that Jones might have something in his system at this moment. I’ve seen people say, “Why not just have the fight and deal with this afterwards?” Well, that’s just not possible. If UFC knows there’s a chance Jones is on something and allows him to fight anyway, they’d be in serious legal trouble. It wouldn’t make sense for them to just let the fight go on as scheduled with the information they received. If they didn’t know, well, then, that’s different.
For selfish reasons, I’m pretty pissed off at Jones. It was the biggest fight of his and Cormier’s career at the biggest UFC pay-per-view ever. I saw their last fight and wanted nothing more than to see these two go at it again. It was the perfect main event for UFC 200. And Jones screwed it all up.
Cormier, who was set to make out financially very well, also, was devastated. UFC president Dana White said that they’d try to find a replacement to fight Cormier. As for Jones, if he’s guilty, it sounds like he’ll be suspended from fighting for two years.
Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt has been moved to the main event.