Jones Says UFC Freedom 250 'Humbled' Him

Jon Jones watched UFC Freedom 250 from the outside. He was not on the card, and the relationship between Jones and the UFC has been strained enough in recent months that his absence was not a surprise. But he watched, and what he saw apparently affected him more than he expected.

"I absolutely loved it. It really showed me — it humbled me, and it showed me that our sport is at a prestigious level right now,” Jones

His career has been defined by a kind of supreme confidence that has, at various points, crossed into arrogance — both inside the cage and away from it. He has been one of the most talented and most troubled figures in the sport's history simultaneously, a combination that has made him difficult to categorise and impossible to ignore.

What he described watching at the White House was something that connected to the longer arc of how MMA has changed during his career.

"When I first started MMA, we weren't allowed to compete in New York state," Jones said. "People looked at it as taboo, a very weird thing to do. Now, it's like a very honourable sport to be a part of — probably one of the most honourable sports to be a part of right now in history,” Jones

Jones came up in a sport that the mainstream still regarded with suspicion, where the legitimacy of the athletes was not taken for granted the way it is now. The White House card, with 85,000 fans at the Ellipse and 34 million global viewers, represents something genuinely different from the sport he entered.

"I'm grateful to be considered one of the best in this sport's history. It makes me feel a lot more important since the White House card,” Jones

Dana White has not shown urgency in booking him, and Jones has been visibly frustrated by that in recent months. The Freedom 250 card going ahead without him was a conspicuous omission for the fighter who has a reasonable claim to being the most important athlete in the sport's history. He could have headlined that event. He did not.

Whether it changes anything about his near-term future in the UFC remains to be seen.