The timing of Jon Jones’ plea bargain couldn’t have been any worse for Daniel Cormier and Alexander Gustafsson.
People were already looking down their noses at Saturday’s UFC 192 main event, when Cormier will face Gustafsson in the first defense of his newly won and fiercely disputed light heavyweight title.
They were already saying this bout and that belt were a sham—and that was before Jones’ seemingly precarious legal snarl stemming from an April hit-and-run accident wrapped itself up in a neat little bow.
Jones skated out of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, district court on Tuesday with no jail time, no fine and no felony conviction after a judge accepted his compromise with prosecutors.
The criminal charges that forced the UFC to strip Jones of the title and put him on indefinite suspension are suddenly on the verge of being history. So long as he can complete a maximum 18-month sentence of supervised probation, he will be a free and unencumbered man. Conventional wisdom says it won’t take nearly that long for him to return to the Octagon.
So Cormier vs. Gustafsson—on shaky ground from the start—suddenly seems completely superfluous. A championship fight originally designed to move the division out of Jones’ shadow now shapes up as nothing more than a glorified No. 1 contender bout.
Because Jones has returned.
Almost.
Immediately following this week’s court appearance, the UFC announced it would fully review Jones’ plea deal before making a decision on his future. Really, though, there’s only one decision to make. So long as the greatest light heavyweight of all time is healthy and willing, there should be nothing stopping him from returning to active duty.
In other words, the moment this weekend when UFC President Dana White wraps the championship around somebody’s waist has already been ruined. We’ve preemptively hurtled it and—to paraphrase the great poet Bill Belichick—we’re on to Jones.
This weekend’s winner will likely receive nothing but scorn from MMA fans if he is anything but deferential and if he does anything other than immediately call out Jones. The only real prize to be won on this night will be a modicum of respect—and maybe the chance to rematch the man most everybody considers the rightful champion.
And, really, that’s not fair to either Cormier or Gustafsson.
Both have already lost to Jones but otherwise have given us no reason to dislike them. They didn’t do anything wrong here. All they did was go about the business of being two of the best 205-pounders in the world, reacting to and benefiting from situations that were beyond their control.
Cormier, who dropped a unanimous decision to Jones in January at UFC 182, was still thought of highly enough for entrance into a bout against Anthony Johnson for the newly vacated title at UFC 187. In that bout he weathered an early knockdown and battled back to claim the championship by third-round submission.
He proved himself to be the better-rounded mixed martial artist than the powerful Johnson and maybe a better MMA fighter than anyone in the division not named Bones. He has been unapologetic about his current standing as champ. He’s has no good reason to apologize, but his steadfastness hasn’t done his popularity any favors.
“I didn’t disqualify myself from competition, Jon did,” Cormier said at the postfight press conference the night he beat Johnson (via MMAFighting.com’s Chuck Mindenhall). “Jon’s the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. We all know that. But, he disqualified himself from this competition right now. So I am the champion.”
Cormier is a good guy and a great fighter, but so far people aren’t buying him as champion. A win over Gustafsson is vital for him to begin proving he’s more than just Jones’ understudy. It’s the first step on the only road that leads to him eventually shaking his runner-up reputation—the road that ends in a second bout with Jones.
Meanwhile, Gustafsson is regarded as the man to come closest to ending Jones’ four-year reign of terror over the 205-pound division. He pushed the champion to the limit in their meeting at UFC 165—a bout where many considered Jones lucky to emerge with a unanimous-decision win.
In the wake of that fight, however, reports emerged that Jones hadn’t trained properly for Gustafsson. Rumors said he was partying too much and hadn’t done his due diligence for the Swede, who came in as a 5-1 underdog, according to Odds Shark.
Considering what we now know about Jones’ lifestyle, those rumblings certainly haven’t taken on any less gravity.
So Gustafsson enters this battle with Cormier as a well-regarded fighter, but one whose biggest accomplishment is a loss. His UFC victories—Jimi Manuwa, Shogun Rua and Thiago Silva, in his last three—don’t appear particularly mind blowing in retrospect.
He also got knocked out in the first round during his most recent appearance, a fight against Johnson at home in Sweden.
Analysts are sill trying to figure out exactly how good Gustafsson can be. A victory over Cormier would mean a lot for his reputation. It would be a step toward proving his surprising showing against Jones was more about Gustafsson’s own attributes than Jones thinking he was going to have an easy night.
On the flip side, a loss would leave Gustafsson 1-3 in last four bouts and would seem to confirm our worst fears about him. It would be a tough hole to battle out of, though at just 28 years old, he would have ample opportunity.
The truly bad news for both Gustafsson and Cormier is that we have no real reason to suspect either can beat Jones, even if granted a mulligan. Unfortunately, that’s what it’s going to take to prove the belt they’re fighting for this weekend is more than just a trinket.
Especially now that the real champ is here again.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com