Brace yourselves for bad news people – Jon Jones has suffered an injury in training that’s forced him to pull out of his blockbuster fight with Daniel Cormier at UFC 178 on September 27th.
Jones is believed to have a torn meniscus and a sprained ankle which left him with no option but to withdraw from the event which is a little over six weeks away.
If there’s something positive that can come out of this hugely disappointing news it’s that his injuries aren’t serious enough to keep him out for too long and so Jones Vs Cormier has now been rescheduled for UFC 183 on January 3rd instead.
Nevertheless, the cancellation is a major blow to the UFC 178 card which had been shaping up to be the biggest pay-per-view of the year.
Instead the UFC have now been forced to move UFC 177’s co-headliner between flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson and Chris Cariaso to the main event slot of UFC 178.
With all due respect that’s at completely the other end of the spectrum in terms of PPV sales with ‘Mighty Mouse’ having barely scraped 100,000 buys the only other time he’s headlined a show last year, and on this occasion he’s facing an even less recognized opponent in Cariaso who’s currently only ranked No.8 at 125lbs.
The UFC have already assembled a strong line-up for the event though, with former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz returning against Takeya Mizugaki, Connor McGregor taking on Dustin Poirier and Tim Kennedy facing Yoel Romero.
It’s still a good card, but a lot of the wind has definitely been taken out of it’s sails due to the Jones Vs Cormier fight going AWOL, and of course by drafting in Johnson Vs Cariaso, UFC 177 has also been weakened.
So much so in fact that it’s now become hard to pick out a suitable co-main event for the August 23rd show. Bethe Correia Vs Shayna Baszler? Tony Ferguson Vs Danny Castillo? Neither of those sounds like an option that’s going to have people digging into their pockets to buy a pricey pay-per-view.
So, the UFC’s lean spell on the PPV front looks set to continue for now, and they’ll now be keeping all their fingers and toes crossed that their injury woes are now over so that they can start 2015 with a massive 1-2 punch in the shape of UFC 182: Jones Vs Cormier and UFC 183: Silva Vs Diaz.
