\u2018Card subject to change\u2019 is a disclaimer familiar to fans in every fight sport. It means that the promotion can and will revise the matchups and competitors on a fight card. It isn\u2019t expected to mean that the entire card might pick up and move to another state but that\u2019s what happened today with the UFC\u2019s announcement that UFC 232 has been moved to The Forum in Inglewood, California. The card was originally slated for the beautiful new T-Mobile Arena in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. UFC 232 will be held on Saturday, December 29 headlined by Jon Jones\u2019 return to fighting after an absence of more than a year.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the broad strokes but the backstory is a bit strange and somewhat convoluted. Jon Jones is scheduled to meet Alexander Gustafsson in the UFC 232 main event hoping to regain the light heavyweight title. Jones was stripped of the title after a positive drug test for a M3 metabolite prior to a July 2017 title fight against Daniel Cormier in Los Angeles. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) suspended Jones for 15 months and he was fined $205,000 by the state of California. <\/p>\n
Jones took a drug test on December 9 in which the USADA reported an \u2018atypical finding\u2019 consistent with \u2018residual amounts\u2019 from the 2017. In other words, Jones somehow got the trace metabolite in his system via some type of incidental contact and not through intentional administration of a \u2018parent drug\u2019. Even after suspending Jones for 15 months in July 2017 the USADA eventually ruled that it did not appear that Jones had committed \u2018intentional doping\u2019 though maintained the punishment that had been handed down.<\/p>\n
This is where everything gets interesting. The USADA has informed the UFC and the Nevada Athletic Commission (NSAC) that it does not classify the December 9 test as being \u2018performance enhancing\u2019. In theory, this shouldn\u2019t jeopardize Jones\u2019 licensing to fight in Nevada but with the bout just six days away and most of the NSAC Commissioners out of town for the holidays there\u2019s no way that he could deal with all of the \u2018red tape\u2019 in time. <\/p>\n
Facing the prospect of canceling a huge payday, the UFC brokered an unprecedented venue change. Jones had been licensed to fight in California earlier this month and the \u2018Golden State\u2019 commission required only a drug test for certification. Jones tested clean on Sunday and the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) approved the fight. The Nevada Commission allowed Jones to withdraw his request for a license to fight in the \u2018Silver State\u2019<\/a> and will have him appear in early 2019 to discuss the matter. The NSAC\u2019s statement: “After extensive analysis of Mr. Jones’ prior 18 months of USADA in- and out-of-competition anti-doping drug testing results, Director Bennett, Chair Marnell and Mr. Jones agree that he will appear at an evidentiary hearing in January. This will allow for a measured, thoughtful and comprehensive discussion of his anti-doping testing protocol and results and provide an opportunity for the NSAC to determine the appropriate path forward for him in Nevada. We look forward to his hearing.”<\/em><\/p>\n The fight media is still trying to make sense of all of this. Depending on how you want to spin it, the Nevada decision to help broker the site change is either a breath of fresh air with states cooperating to do what is best for fight fans or another indication of how money rules everything in the sport. Regardless of the broader implications of the situation the fight is still set with the entire card picking up and moving 4 hours down Interstate 15. The UFC betting odds<\/a> for the fight have Jones installed as a -275 favorite with takeback on Gustafsson at +235. The Over\/Under is set at 4.5 rounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Card subject to change\u2019 is a disclaimer familiar to fans in every fight sport. It means that the promotion can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mma"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4933,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions\/4933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n“Today, NSAC Executive Director Bob Bennett announced that, in consultation with NSAC Commission Chair Anthony Marnell III, unarmed combatant Jon Jones will be allowed to withdraw his pending application for licensure, which was intended to clear him to fight in a major contest in Nevada later this month.\u201d<\/p>\n