It’s unlikely that Jon Jones and
Stipe
Miocic will square off this summer, but the heavyweight title
bout could wind up at one of the most historic arenas in all of
professional sports.

Jones teased a potential booking at Madison Square Garden in New
York on Twitter, and UFC president Dana White later confirmed that
the venue is now the target for the fight.

“As far as I know everything is good and hopefully we have a fight
with him and Stipe very soon,” White said at the UFC on ESPN 44
post-fight press conference. “That’s where we’d like to do it.”

Jones captured the vacant heavyweight strap with a first-round
submission of Ciryl Gane
at UFC 285 in March. It was the first Octagon appearance for
“Bones” in more than three years. Jones signed an eight-fight UFC
deal ahead of the bout, but it’s possible that his fighting career
will end much sooner than that.

“How cool would it be to spend my retirement fight dominating the
greatest heavyweight of all time, in my home state at Madison
Square Garden?” Jones wrote on Twitter. For whatever it’s worth,
Jones backtracked on the retirement talk in a subsequent tweet.

The originally targeted event for Jones vs. Miocic was UFC 290, but
that show already has a pair of title fights at the top of the card
with Alexander
Volkanovski vs. Yair
Rodriguez and Brandon
Moreno vs. Alexandre
Pantoja. A date for the UFC’s return to New York has not been
announced, but it will likely take place in the fall as it often
has in recent years.

Miocic, who holds the UFC record for most consecutive heavyweight
title defenses, hasn’t competed since a second-round knockout loss
to Francis
Ngannou at UFC 260 in March 2021.





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UFC Targeting Madison Square Garden for Jon Jones-Stipe Miocic Title Bout