Dana White rants about getting Jon Jones' only defeat wiped from his record
UFC President Dana White has stated that he has tried hard to overturn Jon Jones DQ defeat against Matt Hamill in 2009 at The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights finale.
Jon Jones was disqualified for illegal 12 to 6 elbows and Dana White has some choice words about the Nevada State Athletic Commission in this regard. Dana White stated his thoughts in an interview with ESPN MMA.
“Jon Jones…..has never been beaten. I have battled hard to get than one taken off his record but it’s almost impossible to do which is insane. It is crazy that the thing does not go away. At the time the Nevada State Athletic Commission was at its weakest. The guy who was running it was weak, the people who were involved in it were weak, everybody was weak at that time. You should be able to look back at that and say OK, let us make that right,” Dana White stated.
Jon Jones was on a three-fight win streak when he faced Matt Hamill. Although Jones dominated the fight, towards the end of the first round he took Hamill down and hit him with some vertical elbows which led to a disqualification.
Many MMA analysts have spoken against the vertical elbows being illegal. UFC commentator Joe Rogan has been the most vocal about it and has stated on numerous occasions in his podcast that the rule needs to go away.
The loss against Matt Hamill is the only one of Jon Jones’ storied career.
Jon Jones at heavyweight
Jones last made the walk to the octagon in February 2020 at UFC 257. He would defeat Dominick Reyes via a unanimous decision. The fight saw a sub-par Jon Jones performance many believed that Reyes won the fight.
Jones soon announced that he had vacated the light heavyweight title and will be moving up a weight division and try to win the gold there.
This decision also erased any possibility of a super fight against Israel Adesanya with whom he had engaged in a war of words on social media for quite some time.
Jones is surely a legend of the sport and he will have some interesting matchups at heavyweight as he tries to capture the gold.