Once you again you clearly don't understand the timeline or the circumstances around this situation.
Before I get into the rest, you're claiming Reyes sent him out of the division ?? That is just pure stupidity considering Jon won the fight and completely cleared our 3 generations at LHW. What was Jon to do?? Hang around and fight Reyes again? Jan? Fight Santos or Smith rematches?? Come on, that is just nonsense. Everyone wanted Jon at HW and it was long overdue.
And yes....the famous 3 years to fight Ngannou BS. People that say this clearly don't understand the circumstances. Jon did not have 3 years to fight Ngnannou, nonsense. He fought his last fight at LHW in Feb 20 and then debuted at HW March 23, which is a 3 year span. However, Jon didn't give up his LHW belt till Aug 20 and at that point decided to move to HW. At that point the focus was to fight Stipe who was HW champ. Jon was not going to fight anyone at HW unelss it was for the belt. And Francis himself was focused on the belt. Francis won the belt in April 21 and that is when the fight made sense. Jon was in a contract dispute and Francis fought Gane instead in Jan 22. And after that Francis injured his knee and was out the entire year of 2022 rehabilitating his knee and negotiating a new deal. So you literally had a span of 6 months for this fight to come together from April 21 to Nov 21. Not 3 years. And when it actually was going to come together, Francis declined.
Jon wouldn't have changed his mind and why? Because for the very event that Jon was booked for, 2 months prior to Francis being let go he actually ended up fighting on.
Francis was offered the fight and new contract and he declined. Jon said yes, was booked for UFC 285, they offered it to Francis and he decliend. So if you're gonna blame anyone, you blame Francis simple as that. And I am not saying Francis ducked Jon, I am saying and always said that he took the better and safer deal to box and fight in PFL, the deal that was better for him at the time.
But to your point, yes he certainly did take the easy way out, which was the smart way. Fighting Jon was riskier beacuse if he lost, then his pay would have gone down from champions pay and he would be in limbo. Fighting Fury, he ended up with a great pay day, but win or lose, he still had his PFL deal that paid him big money. So it was a win win for him to leave the UFC in this case. And to your point about him making more money fighting Fury than he did in his entire UFC career? Once again, that is BS.....you don't compare what made in the past vs a future fight. You would compare future fight vs future fight. And in his contract for Jon Jones, the contract was around 8 million + PPV, so at the least it would equal his purse vs Fury, and likely exceed it if the PPV did very well.