Brock Lesnar Vs. Jon Jones Fight Update

Dana White Open To Brock Lesnar vs. Jon Jones Fight | ESPN

New UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones called out Brock Lesnar following his win over Daniel Cormier at UFC 214, and just a short time later, Lesnar gave a quote to the AP, warning Jones to be careful what he asks for.

While UFC president Dana White is open to doing the fight, he won’t be able to book it anytime soon, as Lesnar still has a little less than half a year left on his USADA suspension, which is currently frozen. If Lesnar wants to fight again, he must first re-enter the USADA pool, and serve the remainder of his suspension.

Originally, we heard that the UFC wanted to do Lesnar vs. Jones in December. But, unless Lesnar secretly joined the USADA pool within the last couple of days, the fight can’t happen until early next year.

Bovada recently released two separate lines on the rumored Lesnar vs. Jones fight, one of them suggests that the fight will happen before July 15 of next year, and the other one has Jones listed as the favorite, despite the fact that he’ll be the smaller man of the two.

Will Jon Jones face Brock Lesnar in the UFC before July 15, 2018?

Yes -160 (5/8)
No +120 (6/5)

Jon Jones vs Brock Lesnar

Jon Jones -350 (2/7)
Brock Lesnar +265 (53/20)

During a recent appearance on the Live Audio Wrestling podcast, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter predicted that the Jones vs. Lesnar fight will happen at the UFC’s big July show next year.

“I do think [Jones vs. Lesnar] is gonna happen because both guys want it really bad and there’s a lot of money at stake to do it. Whoever came up with the idea, that was a really smart idea. But I don’t see it happening until next summer.

“For timing reasons, for scheduling reasons, and for his drug suspension reasons, [Lesnar] isn’t going to be able to fight after WrestleMania anyway. So, you’re talking about WrestleMania and a two month camp before a fight, so really, the earliest is June, and more likely, if you can do it June, you can probably do it on the July 4 weekend show in Vegas, because that’s one of the biggest shows of the year.”

Brock Lesnar’s current deal with WWE will end following next year’s WrestleMania, so he’ll likely finish up his his contract, then immediately begin training for his fight against Jones following next year’s show in New Orleans.

WME-IMG, the UFC’s parent company, needs to make a ton of money within the next couple of years in order to pay off the loans they took out in order to purchase the company, so they need to book big fights. Rumor has it that they even want to bring Ronda Rousey back, even though she was brutally knocked out in each of her last two fights. In short, WME-IMG is trying to make as much money as they can. So is Jon Jones, and so is Brock Lesnar, and right now, Jones vs. Lesnar is the only big money fight on the horizon for the UFC, aside from Bisping vs. GSP.

The Jones vs. Lesnar fight will happen, but the only question is, will Lesnar still be with WWE when it does? It makes sense for him to stay with WWE, as he’s making an incredible amount of money on a very limited schedule, a schedule which would allow him to have one or two fights per year. But, if for whatever reason Vince McMahon doesn’t want to allow Brock Lesnar once again return to the UFC, then expect the current Universal Champ to leave the company in order to take the Jones fight.

Lesnar’s last fight was at UFC 200 in July of last year, and he made more money for that fight than he did for his contracted year in WWE. So, there’s more money for Lesnar in fighting than there is in wrestling, which could be the deciding factor when The Beast is trying to figure out what his next move is after WrestleMania 34.

As previously mentioned, it’ll probably be another year before this fight happens, which means that Jon Jones will likely fight again before he takes on the current WWE star. Expect Jones to be matched up with someone like Alexander Gustafsson next, which is a rematch that most MMA fans are dying to see.