UFC President Dana White has confirmed that he has recently met with Jon Jones’s newly hired advisor Richard Schaefer.
Two weeks ago, Jon Jones announced that he had retained the services of prominent boxing executive and deal-making wizard Richard Schaefer to be his advisor, beginning with brokering the much-desired fight between Jones and Ngannou. Dana White himself has publicly endorsed Jones’s decision, saying in so many words that Schaefer was the best chance there is at a deal getting done for the heavyweight megabout.
In an interview with TSN released Monday, White did not sound anywhere near as optimistic about the negotiations when asked how the initial meeting went.
“I’ll leave that up to them,” White said about the status of the Jon Jones negotiations.
When pressed about where the negotiations currently stand, White again passed the buck to the other side by referring back to recent remarks publicly made by Jones.
“Where we’re at is Jon Jones came out and said he doesn’t want to fight until next year anyway, so it doesn’t make a difference (how the meeting with Schaefer went).”
White didn’t give the public much to work with here, but it certainly seems as though we aren’t any closer to a Jones vs. Ngannou fight, new advisor or not.
In the interview, White did yet again reiterate that Ngannou’s next fight will be against Derrick Lewis and that the only thing holding up that fight from being official is the UFC waiting for Ngannou to return to the States from Cameroon, at which point the deal will get finalized.
To White’s point, Jones did state that he was looking to take his time and move up to heavyweight the right way, which includes a targeted 2022 return date. If that’s the case, that begs the question of why this meeting was held one year in advance of said date.
In any event, should anything develop on this slowly moving story or once the contract has been inked for Ngannou vs. Lewis, we’ll bring you the scoop right here on MMANews.com!
