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Jon Jones is just over 24 hours away from making his long-awaited UFC return.
The former light heavyweight champ returns to the octagon after over three years away to take on Frenchman Ciryl Gane for the vacant UFC heavyweight championship at UFC 285.
Jones makes the move up to heavyweight after spending his entire career until this point at light heavyweight. Gane, meanwhile, fight for the heavyweight belt for the second time after previously losing to Francis Ngannou.
Ngannou shocked the world when he left the UFC high and drying, refusing any of their contract extension offers.
Much has been made about Jones’ change of weight class in the lead up to the fight. Some have criticized Jones for his new look. While the fighter himself has hit back at those critics.
But ultimately, the way Jones looks will be irrelevant the moment the fight begins. And the way he performs will be the only topic of discussion.
Prior to the fight, Jones sat down with Sporting News’ Karissa Maxwell to discuss a number of topics. Among those topics was Jones “ultimate fantasy fight.” As it turns out, the answer may come as a bit of a surprise.
Every fighter has a dream opponent. For @JonnyBones, he told @KarisaMaxwell that it would be cool face Brock Lesnar 👊 pic.twitter.com/LfdWAS3uIu
— Sporting News Fights (@sn_fights) March 3, 2023
“I think fighting Brock Lesnar would’ve been really cool,” Jones said. “You know, Brock isn’t the most technical guy. But he has a massive fan base. He’s a lot bigger than me, and it would’ve been one of those really cool kind of David and Goliath situations. It would’ve been really cool for cross-sport promoting, and I think we both would’ve done great things for our family and for our team financially. And that would’ve been massive.”
Lesnar, of course, is a former UFC heavyweight champ. But he last fought in 2016 against Mark Hunt. He then returned to the WWE where he’s one of the company’s biggest stars.