Jon Jones: What His Reinstatement Means for the UFC

In what was probably no surprise to the MMA community, the UFC officially reinstated the former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones last week. His reinstatement was nothing more than an inevitable finality after he was handed his sentence for his recent felony charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Jones plead guilty to the charge, and he was sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation along with making 72 appearances to speak with children. After working out a plea deal, it was clear Jones was not going to serve any serious jail time. So at that point, the question became not if Jon Jones would return to MMA but when?

The current reigning champion of the light heavyweight division is Daniel Cormier, a man Jones defeated earlier this year. Cormier also just defeated Alexander Gustafsson in a very tough title defense. Gustafsson is another man Jones has a win over. In other words, the stage is perfectly set for Jones to make a dramatic comeback to reclaim a belt he never truly lost. Jones was only stripped of the title through his own actions and legal indiscretions. In other words, no one was able to beat Jon Jones except Jon Jones. Considering Cormier just fought for the belt, and Jones was only very recently reinstated, a title rematch between the two will probably not take place until around March or April next year at the earliest. Cormier was just in a pretty rough and brutal five-round war, so he will need some time off as well. When the two finally do square off again, Jones will not have necessarily had that long a layoff compared to some other main event fighters. Jones’ suspension came deep into his training camp for his then scheduled fight with Anthony Johnson. It was about four weeks out when Jones’ running away from an accident caused it to get shuffled around. With that in mind, ring rust should probably not be a major intangible factor for the fight. Jones has made it clear through his social media accounts that he has also been hitting the gym in his off-time. One thing you can credit to Jones is that he looks to be staying in shape and not getting lazy in the off-time for such a tumultuous period in his life.

My concern for Jones’ return is that if he has truly learned his lesson. Jones’ walked away from this recent incident without much punishment. I almost hesitate to say tefl-Jones, but is that really that far off? Perhaps part of the problem is that Jones was not humbled enough by crashing his Bentley and his DUI charge, or when he failed a drug test for cocaine. Jones isn’t serving any serious jail time for this incident, and he’s only been put on probation and he gets to serve as a public speaker for kids. Have these incidents that he’s piled up through the last few years really scared him straight? I’m not so sure.

On the other hand, the major blow here was to Jones’ own legacy in the sport. Jones was eight title defenses into an epic run as champion. If anyone could have potentially matched or broken Anderson Silva’s run of 10 title defenses in the UFC it could’ve been Jon Jones. He already faced one of the toughest gauntlets of any UFC champions earlier in his run. Had he done that along with broken Silva’s legend, it would have without a doubt cemented Jon Jones as the greatest fighter of all time. Jones is arguably still the best planet on the world today considering he never lost the belt. The man who currently holds the belt lost to Jones. Not to mention the fact that Cormier was arguably a top contender at heavyweight when he opted to move down in weight to pursue Jon Jones.

With Jones’ reinstatement, Ryan Bader’s title hopes are all but dead at this point. Barring any type of unforeseen injury or another incident for Jones, there is no way UFC will give Bader a title shot. Jones and Cormier was one of the biggest fights and buyrates for the UFC this year. There is no way they will put that aside in order to give Bader, a fighter who is not a draw and the fans do not care about. Is that fair? Well, the only reason Bader was in the conversation at all was because Jones was not in the picture. That’s no longer the case. If Bader thinks he can really wait it out for a title shot or avoid a fight with someone like Anthony Johnson, he’s barking up the wrong true. If Bader really wants to try and get a title shot, he has to beat legit top 5 contender such as Gustafsson, Johnson or Glover Teixeira. An uneventful win over Rashad Evans coming off a two-year layoff along with a five-fight winning streak of boring decisions is not enough to cement a title shot in the UFC. Them’s the breaks.

The UFC brass is likely happy they will get the chance to return to one of their biggest grudge matches in Cormier vs. Jones. Cormier is not an idiot. Even he knew this was inevitable and has been gradually talking up and building up to this fight as well. You could even see at the UFC 192 post-fight press conference when he made claims that he would never agree to fight Jon Jones at the Madison Square Garden. From a storytelling perspective, you cannot really write this feud any better. When this fight finally takes place, it will be like the major climax of a sports movie. The WWE creative team is hard pressed to write anything this long-term and dramatic.

For Jon Jones’ sake, I truly hope he has gotten his life straightened out. Some pro athletes who are some of the most talented and gifted athletes on the planet struggle with their personal lives and almost seem addicted to chaos. The reason I hope Jones’ has finally put his immaturity behind him is because he is so amazing. He is truly one of a kind. He’s already tarnished his legacy through his own issues. Now he’s been given another chance, so I hope he does not squander it. As the Doctor says, “Time will tell. It always does.”