UFC president Dana White discusses Brock Lesnar’s interest in returning to the Octagon.
It’s been nearly two full years since Brock Lesnar’s most recent UFC fight, and the talk has been that Lesnar will (again) come out of retirement and return to the Octagon following the completion of his WWE contract.
UFC president Dana White, who said Lesnar is going to be back in his promotion soon, spoke to TMZ Sports about Lesnar’s future.
“I know that Brock’s WWE deal is up at the end of the summer, I think, and I know he wants to fight so I’m sure we’ll end up getting that figured out,” White said.
Recent UFC title challenger Francis Ngannou has expressed interest in taking on the former champion, and while White acknowledged Ngannou as a potential opponent for Brock’s return, he also brought up a much higher profile matchup.
“[Francis Ngannou] is a fine fight, absolutely,” White said. “There’s a lot of options. Jon Jones is very interested in Brock Lesnar and Brock is very interested in Jon Jones.”
Jones called out Lesnar after beating Daniel Cormier at UFC 214 (since overturned to a no-contest), and Lesnar quickly hit back at him by saying “Be careful what you wish for, young man.”
Well there’s no way around the fact that both Lesnar and Jones have run into USADA problems. Lesnar has to re-enter the USADA testing pool and serve out the remaining six months of his one-year suspension after failing his drug test for his UFC 200 bout vs. Mark Hunt. His suspension was frozen after retiring from the sport, so it can only be unfrozen by entering the system again.
Meanwhile, Jones tested positive for turinabol in his pre-fight UFC 214 drug test, marking his second PED failure under USADA testing. That case has not yet been completed, so we don’t know how long a suspension Jones will ultimately receive.
In other words, if Lesnar vs. Jones is something the UFC wants to make, they’ll most likely have to wait until 2019.