The UFC is on a huge high right now, as the promotion is coming off a great event at UFC 196 and has a lot of momentum building up to the next few pay-per-views. UFC 197 is next up at the end of April, and the headliner couldn't be more intriguing. Jon Jones looking to get his light heavyweight title back from Daniel Cormier is must see TV.
On Friday night, though, it was revealed that Cormier has pulled out of the fight because of an injury. This is the second straight pay-per-view in which one of the headliners had to pull out just weeks before the fight. At UFC 196, it was Rafael dos Anjos who pulled out. In that instance, though, the UFC recovered and replaced dos Anjos with Nate Diaz for what ended up being a very good fight. Let's see if the UFC can recover quickly again.
Cormier is the light heavyweight champion because Jones was suspended after his felony hit-and-run and had his title stripped. This will be Jones' first fight since that suspension. His last fight was a victory over Cormier in a title defense, as Jones won that fight via unanimous decision. Cormier and Jones don't exactly like each other, so obviously this fight was highly anticipated, but a foot injury will prevent Cormier from giving it a go.
The fact that this fight won't happen isn't much of a surprise, but the reason it won't happen is. Jones was pulled over and arrested recently for allegedly drag racing. Jones' recent legal trouble is concering, and there were some who thought that the UFC would cancel the fight for that reason, but instead, they decided to let the fight go forward as planned. Cormier's injury is not something that anyone could have anticipated.
The question now is where does the UFC go from here. The promotion has shown the ability to recover quickly when an injury happens like this, and it has options now. It could choose to replace Cormier with another fighter and have a non-title fight be the headliner. If it chooses to do that, Anthony "Rumble" Johnson would be the most logical choice considering he was supposed to fight Jones for the title before he was suspended. Other potential replacements include Alexander Gustafsson, who gave Jones a tough match in 2013, and Ovince Saint Preux.
Another option, which happens to be very interesting, for the UFC here is to pull Jones from UFC 197 also and reschedule the rematch for UFC 200. The card for UFC 200 was just announced and will be headlined by the rematch of Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, but adding Jones vs. Cormier 2 will only add to the intrigue of an event that the UFC wants to be huge. Of course, pulling Jones from UFC 197 will take away a lot of luster from that event, so they definitely will have a tough choice to make in the coming days.
