Bad news Conor McGregor fans.
Despite the Irishman’s Twitter ploys, his hopes of fighting at UFC 200 are officially dead in the water. The UFC has confirmed Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones will headline on July 9.
Appearing on Good Morning America Dana White confirmed the light heavyweight title unification bout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkgXgs2MTI
As reported by MMA Fighting, White said:
UFC 200 has been, uh, interesting to say the least, putting this thing together. There’s been some crazy things that have gone on. Some ups and downs.
Jon Jones just fought on Saturday night and won his fight against OSP. He’s been out for 15 months, and now he’s back, and he wants his light heavyweight UFC title back.
So the main event will be Daniel Cormier versus Jon Jones.
Jones and Cormier were due to fight last weekend at 197, but DC pulled out of the fight with a leg injury.
Light heavyweight champ Cormier had spoken of his eagerness to replace McGregor at the T-Mobile Arena after Jones defeated Ovince Saint Preux.
It has also been revealed by Ariel Helwani on Twitter that the UFC have pulled out all the stops to accomodate DC’s involvement with promoting the new headline fight…
This fight really came together Monday night. That's when UFC asked Cormier to be in NY for this GMA announcement. There was an issue though
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 27, 2016
Cormier's kids had a school recital Wednesday PM that he absolutely did not want to miss. It was a big deal to him to be there. …
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 27, 2016
So after some back and forth, UFC decided to send a camera crew to his kids' school & will stream the recital live to DC's phone later today
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 27, 2016
DC was blown away by the gesture and very appreciative. He said Dana White and Craig Borsari got it done for him. Pretty cool.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 27, 2016
The UFC cannily proving they will support fighters commitments so long as they fulfill contracted promotional duties.
It is definitely a fight of interest, but the organisation is set to lose a lot of money after dropping McGregor from the card.
