‘Undefeated then, undefeated now’: Jon Jones reacts as 12-6 elbows legalised

Jon Jones has once again called for his sole loss to be overturned.

Jones, nowadays the UFC’s heavyweight champion, has long maintained that the single blemish on his 29-fight career record — a December 2009 DQ loss to Matt Hamill — should be overturned, especially given the recent news that the Association of Boxing Commission and Combative Sports has lifted its ban on the so-called ’12-6 elbows’.

This term describes an elbow strike being delivered in a downward vertical fashion, similar to the 12 and 6 numbers on a clock, and has been an illegal move since unified MMA rules were adopted at the turn of the century.

The decision to remove the ban will come into effect at the start of November, though it remains the decision of each state athletic commission in the US to determine if the strikes will be permitted.

Jones, who is expected to defend his heavyweight crown against former champion Stipe Miocic in November, remains the most prominent fighter to have fallen foul of the rule in his 2009 bout against Hamill — particularly given the dominance he showed throughout the contest, which ended just over four minutes into the first round with his disqualification.

UFC boss Dana White — and indeed Jones — have long dismissed the circumstances behind Jones’ sole career loss, though any formal moves to the Nevada Athletic Commission (which oversaw the Hamill fight) have so far been unsuccessful.

It remains to be seen if both parties will again formally petition the commission to amend the result of the fight, though the best that Jones could hope for would almost certainly be a no-contest.

And as Jones wrote in an Instagram post referencing the change in rules, he will seek to have the result changed.

“Undefeated then, undefeated now,” he wrote alongside an image of the Hamill fight. “Dana White, we gotta get that loss out of the history books.”