Pretend for a minute that Turki Alalshikh, the magic man of matchmaking in today’s world of combat sports, wanted to see the fight we never got, Jon Jones versus Francis Ngannou. In fact, no need to pretend at all. Just go check out his cameo appearance on Tuesday’s edition of "Ariel x Ade," where Alalshikh teases that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime fight he’s still interested in trying to make happen.

Absurd, right? That ship has sailed. Ngannou fights in the PFL (every once in a great while), and Jones fights in the UFC (once in an even greater while). They couldn’t come to terms when they were both on the UFC’s roster, what makes us think that they could come together now? UFC doesn’t cross-promote with rivals, if you can even use that word when talking about the PFL collective, and besides…

…Dana White can’t stand Ngannou!

He told the media that Francis “isn’t a good guy” just last month. Dana is stubborn about his grudges. If you’re in his doghouse, he’s not about to throw you a bone. No, we’ve flirted with this fight for so long that it’s lost all meaning and hope, so why even bring it up? Why is Turki playing footsy under the table with an ex-fight we’ve all moved on from, right at a time when Jones is perfectly set up to unify the UFC heavyweight title with Tom Aspinall?

Because, then again … I mean, absurd things happen when dealing in absurd amounts of money. In fact, absurdity is where the action is as we get ready to head into 2025. Absurdity sells. And with the kind of kibble Mr. Moneybags in Saudi Arabia has, the times they are a-changin’. Did you see the February boxing card His Excellency made, to kick off the new “Riyadh Season?” Pulling together every promoter under the sun into a single room together, for one of the most ridiculous boxing events in history? It’s like a pugilist’s orgy — five main events stuffed onto a single card.

The days of “impossible” are long over, even if we hold onto old ideas.

I can still remember Dana shutting down the possibility of cross-promoting with M-1 Global, a Russian outfit that had a stronghold on Fedor Emelianenko at a time when everybody wanted to see him fight Brock Lesnar. Dana couldn’t say the words “M-1 Global” without pinching his nose, the notion of cross-promoting struck him as so preposterous and beneath him to consider

Of course, M-1 Global couldn’t put together Ngannou and Tyson Fury on a lark like Turki did. One snap of the fingers, and the world’s imagination turned to the boxing ring. The day of the hard partition between franchises belongs to another time. Back before Jake Paul and Mike Tyson hit 65 million homes. Before Power Slap came into existence because it kills on Tik Tok. Before Floyd and Conor broke the bank, with Dana helping load up the loot. Before Ngannou nearly pulled off the impossible against Fury and followed that up with a fight against Anthony Joshua.

“We need to send Dana White to the moon,” Turki joked when talking about Jones and Ngannou finally coming together.

Why not? Wasn’t it Dana who tried to put a fight together between Mark Zuckerberg and his pal Elon Musk? Elon surely has a rocket with an ice bath to help deliver Dana safely. Absurdity is fine if it comes with enough zeroes. Money is the universal language, and with the ESPN rights deal coming up, perhaps a showcase of MMA’s GOAT taking on the most terrifying heavyweight in the world would play bigger than ever.

And honestly, if Jones really has a single fight left in him, wouldn’t an Ngannou fight speak to him in ways that Aspinall (allegedly) cannot? Isn’t it all about preserving Jones’s “legacy,” an area where the young pride of Salford offers far more risk than reward? Reward is the key word here. Jones doesn’t want to budge unless he gets paid what he’s worth. What he’s worth, as the greatest of all time, is more than the UFC likes to pay.

But it’s not more than Turki Alalshikh is willing to shell out. That’s a guarantee. Dana was only too happy to accept Alalshikh's money for UFC 306 at the Sphere in Las Vegas, which was part of Riyadh Season's ever-growing calendar. What’s a little side hustle between friends?

Jones and Francis had a tantalizing standoff at a PFL event earlier this year, which was up there in terms of all-time blue balls teases. They have admired each other on social media even as they’ve drifted apart, game recognizing game from afar. If there’s a path to them meeting, the guess here is the fighters themselves would be happy to take it so long as it’s paved in gold.

Maybe it’s not as absurd as it seems. Or maybe it’s just absurd enough to make sense.

Dana can’t stand Ngannou, and that stubbornness has traditionally been a tough thing to overcome. But Dana isn’t stupid, either. Nor is he the lone decision-maker when it comes to the UFC’s ownership group, TKO. As a fight game enthusiast, Alalshikh sees himself as a conductor to transfer that kind of electricity between promotions, and if he’s learned anything, it’s that nothing’s impossible except the offer that’s impossible to refuse.

Absurd, I know. But that’s the game being played.