“I didn’t win that fight. I did something illegal.” —Jon Jones
There’s no reason for Jon Jones to have a DQ on his record unless he crashes his Bentley into a Dairy Queen, which is not out of the realm of possibility when you consider the UFC light heavyweight champion’s driving record.
Why? Because rules are dumb!
That’s according to UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, who hopped aboard the Twitter train on Tuesday after promotion president, Dana White, allegedly put Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) on blast for what happened at The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 10 Finale back in late 2009.
Get a refresher course here.
Based on this tweet by some random Joe Omar, White and Co. are campaigning to have Jones’ 2009 loss to Matt Hamill overturned. Probably because it makes for better promotion and preserves a legacy that needs all the help it can get.
Maybe in 10 years we can get the picogram results overturned, too.
I’m in agreement with this 100%. The 12-6 elbow rule is one of the dumbest rules in combat sports. At the very least that fight should be a no contest. He was completely dominant.
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) June 25, 2019
“I’m in agreement with this 100%. The 12-6 elbow rule is one of the dumbest rules in combat sports,” Rogan wrote. “At the very least that fight should be a no contest. He was completely dominant.”
Sometimes officials will blow the call, even when it exists within the confines of the rules. That’s why other sports have adopted instant replay. Not that anyone gives a shit about my opinion, but I don’t think you should go back in time and start correcting outcomes that don’t fit your current narrative.
Jones seemed to be okay with it after the fact.
“I didn’t win that fight, I did something illegal,” Jones told UFC.com after suffering the first and only loss of his career. “Maybe that’s my youth and inexperience. I messed up and I didn’t win. If I was smarter I would have thrown elbows more correctly so I gotta go back to the drawing board.”
It’s not about the dumb rule, it’s about servicing Jones, which is fine, but nobody would give a rat’s ass if this happened to some low level “Prelims” fighter who bounced from UFC a year later. Maybe instead of focusing on Hamill they should focus on Thiago Santos, who has a very real shot of pulling a Matt Serra in the UFC 239 pay-per-view (PPV) main event next month in Las Vegas.
For much more on that upcoming fight click here.