Mason Jones has never lacked confidence between the cage ropes, but it turns out his ambitions stretch well beyond the octagon. The UFC lightweight recently revealed that if combat sports hadn’t worked out for him, he had his eye on a rather unexpected backup plan: the WNBA.
Speaking about life outside competition, Jones joked that the idea had crossed his mind more than once.
“I did consider going for the WNBA draft, but not quite tall enough. I still want to embarrass myself with that, so I’ll stick to punching people in the face,” he said, making clear the height requirements of professional basketball were always going to be his undoing.
Not one to stop at a single ambitious crossover, Jones kept the bit rolling with a nod to a different weight class altogether.
“I am hoping the UFC will let me identify as a 125 pound flyweight (56.7 kg). Win the title, they’re really easy, but a couple of tough fights, but I think I got the power for it,” he joked, before quickly reassuring fans it was all in good fun. “No, no, all seriousness, I come through Olympic sport background. I did judo, national level.”
The comments arrive at an interesting moment for women’s professional basketball, with the WNBA facing renewed scrutiny over how it defines eligibility for its athletes. The topic recently found its way onto The Joe Rogan Experience, where Rogan didn’t hold back on his thoughts about the league’s handling of the issue.
According to Rogan, the WNBA has backed itself into a difficult corner. “They’ve painted themselves into the most looney position where they can’t define what a woman is,” he said on the podcast.
Rogan argued that acknowledging someone’s gender identity doesn’t erase the physical realities that separate male and female athletes competitively.
“Trans women aren’t women. They’re men who identify as women, which is fine, but there’s a biological distinction that protects women in sports, and that’s chromosomes,” he explained. From there, he floated a simple fix for the league’s eligibility debate. “If you want to play in the WNBA, you have to have XX,” he stated.
The conversation also drifted toward the noticeably different public reaction when the situation is reversed. Rogan pointed out that nobody bats an eye when a transgender man wants to compete against men, unlike the firestorm that erupts in the opposite scenario.
“No one gives a f**k if a trans man wants to try and play in the NBA,” he said. Fellow comedian Ari Shaffir couldn’t resist adding a punchline of his own, joking, “Wait till someone in the WNBA comes out as a man.”
