With Nate Diaz tweeting on Monday night that he was going on vacation this summer, our last hopes of seeing Conor McGregor on the main event of UFC 200 appeared to fade away.
While Dana White always maintained that Conor was off the card and Nate would have a new opponent booked, the Stockton man's insistence that he would only be interested in fighting McGregor meant that a new main-event needed to be added, and it needed to be big.
While it would never have attracted the attention that McGregor Vs Diaz II would, Jon Jones Vs Daniel Cormier II would have definitely gone some way to filling the void as it is one of the most highly anticipated fights in mixed martial arts today, and Dana White had let slip that if Jones came through UFC 197 unscathed and Cormier got the all-clear from doctors (having missed his date with Jones at UFC 197 due to injury), it would be booked.
That plan now appears to be in trouble, as after Jones' five-round brawl with Ovince Saint Preux last weekend he could be handed a mandatory medical suspension of six months, according to MMAFighting.com:
Jones headlined a list of 10 fighters who received potential six-month medical suspensions in the aftermath of UFC 197, according to information released to MMA Fighting by the Nevada Athletic Commission on Tuesday.
The news could be significant for Jones, depending on the outcome of a left foot x-ray requested by the commission.
Jones, the interim UFC light heavyweight champion, is expected to headline UFC 200 on July 9 opposite Daniel Cormier. If his x-ray comes back negative, Jones will be free to fight on the seminal card. However if his x-ray comes back positive, Jones will have no choice but to receive orthopedic doctor's clearance or sit on the sidelines for upwards of six months.
A positive x-ray means Jones will not be allowed to compete again until October, meaning that Dana White and the UFC would need to pull out something big for the main-event.
Should they be unable to find a suitable fight for the main card, then it is possible to imagine them reconsidering McGregor for that slot, but at this time that is nothing other than speculation.
We await news on Jones' x-ray, and even still there is no guarantee that Daniel Cormier will be able to resume training as he awaits news of a scan likely to land next week, thus making the main-event of UFC 200 even more uncertain.
