For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 309.
The official UFC rankings panelists continue to do themselves no favors whatsoever with Dana White.
UFC 309 saw the return of heavyweight champion Jon Jones, who successfully returned from a 20-month layoff to defend his title with a third-round TKO of Stipe Miocic, who was coming off an even longer layoff of more than three-and-a-half years. The fight headlined the pay-per-view event at Madison Square Garden in New York.
For months, White has repeatedly fussed about Jones not being No. 1 in the official UFC pound-for-pound rankings, where he sat at No. 3 behind light heavyweight champ Alex Pereira and lightweight champ Islam Makhachev prior to UFC 309. Coming out of the event, Jones has jumped up one spot to leapfrog Pereira for the second spot, but he remains behind top-ranked Makhachev.
Unsurprisingly, White is perturbed by Jones still not claiming the top spot and made that clear Monday night on his Instagram Stories.
“I have to get rid of these CLOWNS!!” White wrote. “(Mark Zuckerberg), let’s get this AI deal done ASAP!!!!!”
White must’ve believed Jones’ easy win over Miocic would convince the UFC rankings panel to place him No. 1, but that’s not the case.
Last month, White said he was open to the UFC rankings being compiled, in part, by AI and consulted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who’s a big UFC fan.
“I could go on and on and on, but I won’t,” White said. “We literally had meetings this week to work on it. I actually talked to Mark Zuckerberg, too, about AI, so yeah, I’m totally going to fix the rankings. We’re going to make a lot of strong moves here coming into 2025.”