LAS VEGAS – Jon Jones almost wasn’t going to enter the octagon at UFC 285.
As Jones was about to walk up the steps to enter the cage for his vacant heavyweight title fight against Ciryl Gane this past Saturday at T-Mobile Arena, a Nevada Athletic Commission official stopped him for having too much tape on his foot. His cornerman proceeded to partially cut off the tape, only leaving some of it to protect his toe.
The moment was a brief scare for Jones (27-1 MMA, 21-1 UFC), who said it could have been much worse if the commission forced him to remove the tape entirely.
“I used a different tape,” Jones told MMA Junkie and other reporters at the UFC 285 post-fight news conference. “I usually use a certain brand of tape. I’ll give them a shoutout, War Tape. I feel like it’s just a lot stickier. I used the UFC’s tape tonight and as soon as my body started to sweat, the tape was sliding all over the place.
“So I made almost like a little cast around my toe that linked down to the middle of my foot so that the tape wouldn’t slide off my toes. And when I got out there, the commission was like, ‘You can’t tape your feet.’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I’ve always taped my feet.'”
The abrupt moment just seconds before his fight didn’t seem to affect Jones, who steamrolled Gane by first-round submission to claim the vacant heavyweight belt. After the fight, Jones told ESPN that he broke his toe when he fought Chael Sonnen in 2013 and has been taping his toe in practice ever since.
Jones made it clear that he won’t compete if he can’t wrap his toe.
“I’m not going to compete if I can’t tape my toes,” Jones said. “I just won’t do it. I want everyone to know that in the future, so thank God we didn’t have a disaster out there tonight.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 285.
