According to UFC CEO Dana White, heavyweight champion Jon Jones tore his pectoral muscle right off the bone during a sparring session weeks before his highly anticipated return to the Octagon.
With UFC 294 seeing not one, but two high-profile fighters forced to withdraw due to injuries days before the event, the last thing the promotion wanted to see was another top star go down before one of its biggest nights of the year. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened.
Late Tuesday, White confirmed that ‘Bones’ had suffered the pectoral injury that will require surgery to repair and could keep him on the shelf for up to eight months, if not longer.
In preparation for his clash with Stipe Miocic at UFC 295 on November 11, Jon Jones had been putting in a lot of work on his ground game by training with some monster-sized heavyweights that could provide the best possible resistance to Jones’ takedown attempts.
In the video clip, which you can see below, Jones attempts to shoot in on his training partner who appears to resist a little too much resulting in the devastating injury.
A small clip of what caused Jon Jones' injury.
Here's to a speedy recovery
#UFC #MMA #Boxing #UFC295 #JonJones pic.twitter.com/2pVam04zBw
— Abe (@AbeMorales209) October 25, 2023
Could Jon Jones Be Back Sooner Than Expected?
With Jon Jones now out of his first heavyweight title defense, the promotion will turn to top-ten contenders Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich who will slide into the UFC 295 co-main event for the interim heavyweight championship. Dana White has since confirmed that they will look to reschedule Jones vs. Miocic for 2024 with the winner facing the winner of Aspinall vs. Pavlovich to unify the heavyweight titles next year.
Initially, the timeline for Jon Jones’ return was expected to take roughly eight months, but according to Board Certified Orthopedic Sports Surgeon David Abbasi, MD, ‘Bones’ could be cleared for a comeback in as little as four to six months based on the severity of the injury.
“Brutal news about Jon Jones, the fact that he tore his pec muscle off of the bone,” Abbasi said on X. “This is an injury sometimes we see with bench press on the way down. It can also happen when your arm gets overly stretched, places too much stress on the tendon, and it will tear and retract into the chest and that’s the reason you need to have surgery on the sooner rather than later, because it can actually scar in and you’re unable to stretch it back for the repair.
“I do you think the timeline of the eight months seems a little bit long,” Abbasi continued. “A lot of these can get a full recovery in four-to-six months. From my personal experience, a lot of times these guys are jumping the gun because they feel so good. So hopefully he can come back a little bit sooner but definitely bad news with Jon Jones, but he did need to get this addressed now” (h/t MMA Mania).