Dana White Gave Alexander Gustafsson the Option to Delay Jon Jones Rematch Until March
It was a surprising day in Las Vegas for top ranked light heavyweight contender Alexander Gustafsson when he was summoned to UFC headquarters for some news about his fight against Jon Jones this past weekend.
In the latest episode of ‘UFC Embedded’, Gustafsson is shown taking a helicopter tour around the Grand Canyon only to return and find out that his main event fight at UFC 232 was being moved from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
The move was made after Jones tested positive for trace amounts of Turinabol — the same anabolic steroid that was in his system last July when he was suspended after fighting Daniel Cormier — but it was determined by USADA that the latest drug test was just a residual effect from the previous incident and not a new ingestion of the banned substance.
The more interesting part of the behind the scenes look at how this all happened is that UFC president Dana White laid out all the information to Gustafsson but still gave him the option to rescheduled the fight if he didn’t feel comfortable facing Jones.
“Just to be clear, this isn’t about me and it’s not about keeping the f—king fight on,” White told Gustafsson and his team after they arrived at UFC headquarters. “I’m going to have a fight either way and I don’t got to go to f—king L.A but it’s not fair to you and it’s definitely not fair to Jon either. He didn’t do anything wrong.
“We have every expert on f—king Earth saying he didn’t do anything wrong so the fight should happen. But if you have any doubts in your mind, we can cancel this thing and do it in f—king March.”
Obviously, Gustafsson opted to keep the fight scheduled for Saturday night but now he’ll face Jones in Los Angeles at The Forum with the winner being declared the new light heavyweight champion.
Check out the rest of the episode of ‘UFC Embedded’ to see more behind the scenes action including Amanda Nunes arriving in Las Vegas and Cris Cyborg just days away from their co-main event showdown at UFC 232.
