It's being billed as the biggest week in UFC history and it's just lost its main event. Jon Jones has never been the most reliable kind of chap and now he's taken that to the extreme as a June drug test has been flagged and Jones has promptly been booted off the card leaving Brock Lesnar's non-title fight with Mark Hunt to pick up the slack.
The first thing to be said, in spite of the incredible marketing potential of a last minute return, Conor McGregor will not be anywhere near UFC 200. That ship sailed a long time ago. But with all that went before it, Jones' withdrawal from the card was never going to pass off without some kind of comment from the McGregor camp.
Sure enough, John Kavanagh obliged with a stellar use of emojis and the retweets came rolling in.
I wonder if there's any regret taking him off the card over a press conference now? 🤔💉💉🚫🚫
— Coach Kavanagh (@John_Kavanagh) July 7, 2016
That's entertaining enough in itself but, despite having to deal with the fallout from another main event withdrawal at the worst possible opportunity, Dana White still took the time to address Kavanagh's entirely rhetorical question.
zero
— danawhite (@danawhite) July 7, 2016
You've got to love that this is the only tweet he's sent since news of Jones' withdrawal broke. He still hasn't even had time to change his cover photo away from the Jones vs Cormier poster. And yet, despite the million and one things on his plate overnight, he kept an eye on Kavanagh's twitter and managed to respond just to get everyone talking a little bit more.
Either it's all a delightful marketing ploy to play up the McGregor vs UFC angle ahead of the Diaz rematch or it really is just an impressive level of trolling from Kavanagh. Either way we're all going to sit back and eat it up.
