Joshua Dahl-USA TODAY Sports

What exactly is a UFC interim belt? For starters, it's fast becoming essentially worthless.

Fool's gold. A facade. Worth little more than the tinfoil it's printed on. A promotional prop versus the original intent, which was to act as an actual marker for being the best, when the best was unable to perform for an extended period of time.

Back in the day, an interim belt carried tacit value.

It was a useful tool for keeping a division moving along when times got tough. If a sitting champ suffered a serious injury and couldn't defend his belt for a year or more, the UFC could and eventually would smartly set up an interim title fight between contenders No. 2 and No. 3 (more or less).

Take, for example, when former (and now current) bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz just couldn't stay healthy. A series of injuries kept him away for nearly three years.

Knowing Cruz would be out for quite some time, given he'd torn his ACL, the UFC booked an interim title fight between Renan Barao and Uriah Faber, which Barao won. Cruz was eventually booked in a unification bout with Barao; however, Cruz tore his groin and would be unable to compete. That's when the UFC appropriately promoted Barao to the outright and undisputed champion.

There are other examples when creating an interim belt made good sense.

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In 2004, then-heavyweight champ Frank Mir had a motorcycle accident, breaking his femur and tearing all the ligaments in his knee. In 2011, then-heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar had an intestinal disorder that ended up requiring surgery. Later that year, then-welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre, like Cruz, tore an ACL and would be out nearly a year.

Fast-forward to today, and interim belts are being devalued worse than a Transformers film (OK, maybe not that bad). Look no further than the current Jon Jones-Daniel Cormier ordeal.

Cormier, the sitting champ, was forced to pull out of UFC 197 due to a foot injury. Current estimates have him on the sidelines for only four to six weeks, per Brett Okamoto of ESPN.com. Four to six weeks is a considerably shorter period of time than the 17 months Cruz was initially on the sidelines.

So it makes no real sense for the UFC to do what it did...

Which was to book Jones in an interim title fight opposite sixth-ranked Ovince Saint Preux?!

Just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that fight booking. Heck, it will be a nice tuneup fight for the former champ, who's been out of action for more than a year. But making it for the light heavyweight interim belt?

Why?

It's mostly about marketing.

That, and Jones may have demanded it for saving the main event and thus the pay-per-view. There's always a certain amount of risk in taking on a random opponent on late notice, so he might as well get something shiny out of it.

As far as marketing goes, the UFC can now promote this fight as a "title" fight. There are "real" stakes. And when Jones and Cormier face off later this year, the UFC can hype it as a "champion vs. champion" fight!

It's essentially the same gimmick the UFC employed when then-featherweight champ Jose Aldo was forced out of his UFC 189 fight versus Conor McGregor due to a rib injury. In order to keep McGregor on the fight card and with some semblance of stakes, the UFC made his fight with Chad Mendes an interim title fight. And when McGregor and Aldo met at UFC 194, just a few months later, it was to "unify" the belt.

That's when the interim belt jumped the shark.

And now you have Aldo facing off against Frankie Edgar for a 145-pound interim belt, not because McGregor is crippled and cannot defend it, but because he demanded a rematch two weight classes up (at 170 pounds) versus a fighter in Nate Diaz who's a natural 155-pounder (McGregor is a natural 155-pounder too, for what it's worth). Adding insult to injury, even though it makes sense as far as timetables go, Aldo and Edgar will go at it on the same card, UFC 200, as Diaz and McGregor.

It's bordering on anarchy. Ham-fisted by an oligarchy.

Yet it's not a bad strategy by the UFC brass.

Most casual fans, those who send PPV buyrates north of 1 million, will take the bait. They'll at least go along with the idea that real stakes are involved. Smoke and mirrors are opium for the people—at least when they aren't clear on how the sausage is made.

My brother-in-law-texted me after he'd heard the news of the Jones-Saint Preux booking: "What a lame fight!!!. So Jones will be champ again after he wins that fight?" I replied, "It's complicated," and then proceeded to explain to him the history of the interim belt and how the current incarnation was being bastardized.

His response? "Well, that's kinda lame." Kinda lame, indeed. An interim title fight has become as meaningful as a Tinder "date." Just swipe right and you're competing for, well, something.

Still, we get to watch the best fighter on the planet finally return to the Octagon. If it means we have to deal with the meaninglessness of one more misguided interim belt, well, so be it.

MMA fans are used to big fights falling a part all the time. That the sport is so brutal, it makes it such a delicate thing to hold together. Putting fans in a position that we're just happy Jones is still fighting, versus anyone, and under any circumstances. A las it's the cross we bear.