DC vs. Jones II: Karmic Justice or Unworthy Consolation?

Are we still talking about Conor McGregor?

Well, I just mentioned him, so we must be, right?

That’s right, people. We are officially through the looking glass. We are living in a world where the biggest name in the UFC is not fighting on the biggest card in UFC history.

How do we know that UFC 200 will be the biggest card in UFC history? Because Sage Northcutt is fighting on it, and he fought a bad staph infection to do it. Seriously, the thing could have killed him. You should be honored to live on this planet at the same time as him.

Page VanZant, too. Maybe the main event of UFC 200 can just be one of her routines from Dancing with the Stars. She can have Cain Velasquez as her partner since she’s used to the one she has on the show getting injured.

Anyway…it is true that we are not getting our originally booked main event of McGregor vs. Nate Diaz in the rematch of the millennium. Or at least it is for now…

In it’s place, as announced by Dana White last week, will be Daniel Cormier defending his “totally legitimate” UFC Light Heavyweight Championship against the man he didn’t beat to win the title, Jon Jones. It is a fight that has been bubbling and ready to boil over since Jones beat Cormier back at UFC 182. It is a fight that was supposed to take place at UFC 197 but didn’t due to a Cormier injury, leading to the greatest Interim UFC Light Heavyweight title fight since Randy Couture vs. Chuck Liddell (also, the only one), when Jones pawed at Ovince Saint Preux for 25 minutes to claim the title.

This is good, though, right? The biggest event in UFC history needs to have a title fight at the top, right? Even better if it’s a title fight with a story behind it, one of redemption (or, if Cormier wins, one about teaching kids that injuring pregnant women and leaving your drug paraphernalia in a car you just wrecked mere months after going to “rehab” for cocaine addiction isn’t the path to success it’s made out to be), between two hated rivals who represent the absolute best in their weight class. It makes sense for a show of this magnitude, right?

But…it’s still not Conor McGregor.

The number one biggest gripe coming out of this fight announcement was the confirmation that Conor is not fighting on this show, which also means that Nate isn’t likely fighting either. All because he didn’t want to do all the media he had agreed to do by signing the contract to fight on the show. The struggle is real, you guys. It’s very real.

If there’s a close second, though, it would go to all the fight fans reacting to the initial reaction by pointing out the hypocrisy of everyone wishing McGregor-Diaz II was still on the card when we were panning the fight after it was announced last month.

Did the fight make no sense to book? In a sense. It seemed pretty obvious that it was only put together to please Conor, who was more interested in avenging his first UFC loss than doing anything else, like defending the featherweight belt he won last year. Does he still even have the belt? It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s used it to tip a bellhop or put it as a down payment on a Lamborghini or something.

It also seemed weird to place it, a non-title fight, as a main event, especially when there were two title fights scheduled underneath it, but we all know the fight was placed on the card for financial reasons and not athletic ones.

Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. Conor is the most popular fighter in the sport. You can’t bill an event as the biggest ever without it featuring the top drawing fighter in the company. You can’t do it.

Still, the fight represented an unnecessary rematch that was only put together to please a top fighter (and Lorenzo Fertitta wonders how a fighter who gets everything he wants could demand more…), taking place between two guys who had more logical booking options elsewhere. That’s the positive for people who didn’t like the booking, since the fight is probably not going to happen when Conor does fight again later this year.

That being said, is it wrong to be bummed out that we aren’t getting that fight and are getting Cormier-Jones instead? I don’t think so. I mean, I’m curious to see who wins the rematch, although not as much after Jones played it way too safe last week, but I’d already gotten used to the fact the McGregor-Diaz rematch is happening. I was ready for it and now it’s gone, forever lost to the graveyard of cancelled fights, which is coincidentally located right next to the AKA gym.

That’s right, Rockhold. I just went there. Again. You wish you were as creatively bankrupt as me…

So, what’s happened, whether it makes sense, sensibly or financially, or not, has happened. We got a big, relevant title fight on top of the biggest card in UFC history, even though it won’t draw as well as a Conor vs. Anyone fight, and UFC now has the option to put Conor on another card and generate a buyrate that wouldn’t have been there with another fight. UFC 200 will do fine financially with Cormier and Jones in the main event.

It just won’t do as well as if Conor was still on the card. That’s all.

And, for Dana, I’m sure the night terrors he has, where he wakes up in a big sweat fearing that UFC 200 won’t pull a higher buyrate than UFC 100, will go away eventually.

Maybe.

Evan Zivin has been writing for 411 MMA since May of 2013. Evan loves the sport, and likes to takes a lighthearted look at the world of MMA in his writing…usually.