It’s good to know that we weren’t alone in our confusion when it was announced that the winner of either the Mauricio Rua/Brandon Vera or Lyoto Machida/Ryan Bader bouts, specifically the former, would be in line for the next title shot at 205 lbs. Given that current champion Jon Jones has walked through all four of those gentlemen before, we struggled to find the reasoning behind the alleged title shot that supposedly awaited the most impressive winner from this weekend’s UFC on FOX 4 event. Then again, Rich Franklin has decided to chase after middleweight gold and revenge for a third time (which totally wont end in his untimely death), so maybe we were too quick to write off these former champions, TUF winners, and hype machines. In either case, Bones took to his Twitter account to voice his frustration, sending out the above tweet yesterday which simply states “Scratching my head.”
But perhaps even more confounding than the UFC’s apparent apathy in regards to JBJ was the realization that the light heavyweight division, one of the most stacked and competitive divisions in the UFC for some time, has nearly been cleared out in a little over a year. If Jones gets past Dan Henderson at UFC 151, something he obviously feels he is going to do as evidenced by the above tweet, there will arguably be only two viable candidates left for him to face: Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira.
Dana White has teased that the man known by the Potato Nation as “Bjones” is “ready for a big fight now”, leading us to believe that a meeting with Rashad Evans could be on the horizon. A victory over the former champ would all but cement the Swede’s position atop the division. As for Teixeira, it’s simply too early to tell. He looked great in his debut victory over Kyle Kingsbury, but needs to face at least one of the upper echelon fighters before we are convinced he is ready for a title shot. But for the moment, it appears that the LHW division needs an H-bomb like Nick Diaz needs a clue.
In other, alcohol-related Jon Jones news…
A ruling has finally been handed down in Jones’ May 19th DUI arrest, which was delayed on several occasions to give Bones enough time to complete his whopping two day court-mandated alcohol abuse and dependency evaluation. The champion received a $1,000 fine and a six month license suspension, a fee that he more than likely carries around in his shoe on a daily basis considering he totaled a quarter million dollar Batmobile in the accident. Meanwhile, you could face a fine of up to $200 if you were caught selling someone a 17 ounce soda in New York City. Clearly lawmakers in this country are determining misdemeanor based fines in the same fashion that the United States Treasury determines the most prudent move for failing insurance companies.