Jon Jones returns at heavyweight against a former champion!

Former UFC light heavyweight kingpin Jon “Bones” Jones is making his long-discussed move to the promotions heavyweight division.

News just broke that Jon Jones will return to the octagon at July’s highly anticipated UFC 213 pay-per-view event where he will square off with former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez.

Jon Jones was last seen inside the octagon at UFC 197 in April of 2016 where he scored a unanimous decision victory over Ovince Saint Preux – capturing the UFC interim light heavyweight title in the process.

Following his victory over “OSP”, “Bones” was booked for a title unification bout with bitter rival Daniel Cormier for UFC 200 in July of 2016.

Unfortunately for fight fans, Jones was removed from the rematch with “DC” just days before the event (UFC 200), this after being flagged for a anti-doping policy violation by USADA.

Jones was then slapped with a one year suspension and subsequently stripped of his interim light heavyweight title by UFC officials.

As for Cain Velasquez, the former UFC heavyweight title holder was most recently seen in action at this past July’s blockbuster UFC 200 event in Las Vegas where he scored a first-round TKO victory over Travis Browne.

Prior to that, Velasquez was coming off a submission loss to Fabricio Werdum in the main event of UFC 188 where he surrendered his UFC heavyweight championship.

Cain has gone 5-1 in his past six contests overall, scoring TKO victories in four of those past five wins.

Now for the punishing part of this story… BJPENN.com would like to wish all our readers a Happy April Fools Day!

Unfortunately this fight (Jones vs. Velasquez) is not happening, well, at least not to our knowledge.

With that said, UFC President Dana White did recently state that he is hopeful that Jon Jones will return at International Fight Week this July in Las Vegas to face the winner of next weekend’s UFC 210 main event title fight rematch between Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson.

Stay tuned to BJPENN.com for further updates.

This post first appeared on BJPENN.com April 1/2017