Jon Jones exposed Dana White's impotence over TKO's UFC

A huge loss of face & a fitting conclusion under Ari Emanuel's UFC ownership.

If you are as numbed as I am to the day-to-day politics of UFC, you’re not alone.

But don’t be fooled by the news of Jon Jones allegedly retiring — it is a very big story, but for none of the reasons that major media outlets are covering.

There are no winners in this Mexican Standoff between Jon Jones and UFC.

It’s not a sad story for any of the parties involved. It’s a tragic representation of how powerless fans are in TKO’s take-it-or-leave-it environment.

There is zero incentive for TKO to make the biggest and best fights.

And this should serve as a red alert for boxing fans. TKO doesn’t need to expand the pie by growing the boxing audience. All they need to do is shrink the pie and take complete ownership of it. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that Mark Shapiro has utilized with UFC, is currently utilizing with WWE, and is preparing to utilize with TKO Zuffa Boxing thanks to Turki Alalshikh’s bank account.

Cost Savings Shapiro might be thrilled that the Jon Jones roller coaster is officially shut down, but that doesn’t make this UFC Heavyweight scene any less unsatisfactory.

The story about Jon Jones is a story about brand equity. It’s also a story about breaching fiduciary duty. It’s an official end to the UFC marketing claim that they can put on the biggest and best fights, substantively or procedurally, through corporate proclamation.

The public is smart enough to know that a trilogy of fights between Jon Jones, Francis Ngannou, and Tom Aspinall was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. No other fight promoter, historically, either in MMA or boxing, would have turned down that scenario no matter the opportunity costs.

TKO is the first major monopoly promoter to be indifferent about closing the big deals. Their inability to adapt, combined with creative bankruptcy, is financial Novocaine.

Make no mistake about it — before TKO, a promotion not being able to make the biggest fights possible was suicidal. TKO has turned that equation on its head by of the sheer force of their multi-monopoly.

I use the phrase process hustle to describe how TKO has combined their media & sports monopolies with world governments acting as their co-promoters. Governments can print money. That’s the whole exercise and demonstration of power with TKO’s marriage to Turki Alalshikh.

But despite the billions of dollars that WWE & UFC generate annually, Jon Jones has managed to expose some very harsh and uncomfortable truths about where things stand for promoters in today’s fight business.

These are lessons that media executives at ESPN and Amazon should pay close attention to.

What smells like strength is masking weakness.