Dana White said this afternoon that Daniel Cormier will be fighting at UFC 200, and in speaking off the cuff, seemed to intimate Jon Jones may be in even more trouble than previously thought.
“There are tons of guys that are interested. We’ll get a fight done,” White said to Colin Cowherd on FS 1 today.
Later, White said Cormier would fight this weekend, would get the same money* as he would have against Jones, and that they hope to have the fight finalized and announced by the end of the day today.
*Cormier’s money is based on a percentage, but the amount is expected to be lower since the number of buys will likely be lower.
Cormier had said he was willing to fight anyone up to 220 pounds, saying that because he’s dropped so much weight he wasn’t willing to fight a big heavyweight.
White nixed the talk of Michael Bisping, which would be the most marketable potential fight for storyline reasons.
“Bisping just won the 185 pound title,” he said. “Let me tell you what Bisping does in his off season. When Bisping’s not training, he goes on a bender. He’s in no condition to fight Daniel Cormier. I promise you that. I don’t even have to ask him.”
Bisping was the third name after Gegard Mousasi and Tom Lawlor who publicly asked for the fight when word got out that Jones was off. He would make the most sense given it would create an historical champion vs. champion fight, and there is a storyline situation with Bisping having just beaten Luke Rockhold on June 4 to win the middleweight title.
Even if odds would be against it, it would make for a remarkable story if Bisping could win two titles on short notice. In fact, if such a thing would happen, it would probably go down as something that would be a huge part of the history of the sport that would be talked about for decades as the perhaps the most remarkable feat in UFC history.
Mousasi was already scheduled to fight Thiago Santos on Saturday. For fighters who have trained and are in top condition, Mousasi is really the only choice, but there is no story built around that fight. Mousasi was to fight at middleweight, but has fought at heavyweight in the past and fought for years at light heavyweight.
Glover Teixeira said today it would be impossible for him to make weight to fight Cormier, but Alexander Gustafsson said he could make it and do the fight. In the case of the former, Teixeira is set to face Anthony Johnson later this summer in essentially a #1 contender’s fight while Gustafsson and Cormier had a Fight of the Year candidate in 2015.
Onto the Jones story, White confirmed that Jones did not test positive for a recreational drug.
Also, when saying how it’s virtually impossible the B sample will come back clean, White mentioned two different agents in the A sample test failure. It is possible testing positive for two agents could lead to a suspension longer than two years.
Jones held a press conference Thursday morning where he denied taking any performance enhancing drugs.