There’s some chaos atop the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s
heavyweight division.
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UFC president Dana White announced on Saturday that Jon Jones and
Ciryl
Gane will square off for the vacant heavyweight belt in the
UFC
285 main event on March 4. He also revealed that Francis
Ngannou has been released from his UFC contract and is now a
free agent. White said that the promotion and Ngannou were unable
to come to terms on a deal following his victory over Gane at UFC
270 in January 2022. Ngannou has been on the mend after undergoing
knee surgery after that fight, and he also expressed displeasure
with his contract following his last Octagon appearance.
“We’ve been negotiating with (Ngannou) for more than two years,”
White said. “We offered Francis a deal that would’ve made him the
highest paid heavyweight in the history of the company – more than
[Brock] Lesnar, more than anybody, and he turned the deal
down.”
Jones has been on the sidellines since defending his light
heavyweight crown in a victory over Dominick
Reyes at UFC 247 on Feb. 8, 2020. Now 35 years old, “Bones” is
regarded as one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters in MMA
history with two separate 205-pound title reigns and a 20-1 record
in UFC competition. The only blemishes on Jones’ record are a
disqualification loss to Matt Hamill
in 2010 and a no contest against Daniel
Cormier in 2017 that came as a result of a failed drug test.
The New York native owns notable wins over the likes of Thiago
Santos, Alexander
Gustafsson (twice), Cormier, Glover
Teixeira, Chael
Sonnen, Vitor
Belfort, Lyoto
Machida, Quinton
Jackson, Rashad
Evans, Ryan Bader
and Mauricio
Rua.
Gane, meanwhile, is a former interim heavyweight champion whose
only loss in 12 professional appearances came in the aforementioned
fight against Ngannou. The Frenchman rebounded from that defeat in
his last outing, as he knocked out Tai Tuivasa
in Round 3 of the UFC Fight Night 209 main event on Sept. 3. “Bon
Gamin” owns other significant wins against the likes of Derrick
Lewis, Alexander
Volkov, Jairzinho
Rozenstruik and Junior dos
Santos.
UFC 285 takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and is also
expected to include a welterweight duel between Shavkat
Rakhmonov and Geoff Neal as
well as a middleweight clash between Derek
Brunson and Dricuss Du Plessis.