Stipe Miocic Deserved Better Than Being Jon Jones' Retirement Gift

Stipe Miocic deserved a better ending than UFC 309. The most accomplished heavyweight champion in promotional history — two separate title reigns, three consecutive defenses against Alistair Overeem, Junior dos Santos, and Francis Ngannou the first time around — walked into Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024, and became little more than a retirement party favor for Jon Jones. That's not hyperbole. That's what happened when the UFC matched a 42-year-old firefighter who hadn't fought in three and a half years against the sport's most decorated light heavyweight moving up a division.

The third-round body kick finish told the story everyone expected. Jones looked sharp. Miocic looked exactly like a fighter who'd been away from competition since March 2021, when Ngannou knocked him out to reclaim the belt. The speed wasn't there. The timing that made Miocic so effective in his prime — the ability to time counter right hands against aggressive strikers — had eroded during the layoff. Jones exploited every gap, and the result was never in doubt after the second round.

What stings is that Miocic's actual achievements warranted better matchmaking. He holds the record for consecutive heavyweight title defenses at three. He avenged the first Ngannou loss by knocking out Daniel Cormier twice in their trilogy. He beat Junior dos Santos, Mark Hunt, and Fabricio Werdum when those names meant something in the division. If the UFC wanted to give Miocic a proper send-off, they could have matched him against a ranked contender in a fight that made competitive sense — someone like Sergei Pavlovich or even Alexander Volkov, fighters Miocic has publicly praised as future contenders. Instead, they fed him to Jones in a fight that existed solely to pad Jones' resume before retirement.

The recent speculation around Jones potentially leaving the sport makes the matchmaking look even more cynical. If Jones retires now, UFC 309 becomes the fight where the promotion sacrificed its greatest heavyweight champion to manufacture a highlight-reel moment for its biggest star. Miocic didn't get a winnable fight to rebuild momentum. He didn't get a co-main event against a peer from his era. He got used as a name on Jones' list of conquests, then sent into retirement with a body-shot knockout that overshadowed two decades of work.

Miocic handled the aftermath with characteristic professionalism, but the result doesn't change. The UFC owed him more than this. They owed him a fight that respected what he accomplished when the heavyweight division actually mattered. Instead, they gave him a role in someone else's coronation, and that's a disservice to the best big man the sport has ever seen.