If there’s been one guy who’s come out of the UFC 151 debacle looking universally bad to MMA fans, it’s Jon Jones. It’s been one mishap after another as far as fan relations are concerned. The backlash for Jones may continue after this tidbit of information.
As reported by Franklin McNeil on MMA Live, a source close to Jones stated that the UFC champion offered to pay the purses of the fighters due to the event being canceled. Jones’ good deed, however, never happened due to Twitter.
“A source from very close to him said Jon Jones was willing to pay the fighters, he felt so bad about the card being cancelled, he was willing to pay the fighters on that card their fees. But after all these attacks on him by other fighters, he chose not to do that. He feels really bad about this situation and did not expect the entire card to be cancelled.”
It’s easy to understand why Jones wouldn’t want to face a guy the caliber of Chael Sonnen on such short notice, but he isn’t doing himself any favors with MMA fans with information like this being leaked out.
With the reports recently about Jones asking Dana White to tell Sonnen to lighten up on the verbal attacks combined with this news, Jones’ image continues to suffer terribly. I don’t get why he would change his mind so quickly on a charitable notion like this unless he didn’t really want to do it in the first place.
If the information is true, this notion is on the level of “Hey Jon, go check on Machida, get some fans.“
It almost sounds like Jones was looking for a way out of doing this due to the petty reasoning behind it. It’s admirable the Jones would even offer to do something like this, but to refuse based off fighters being upset with him is a little ridiculous. Did he expect the guys on the card to be fine with their livelihoods being jeopardized by the card being canceled?
Obviously, nobody called “no take backs” on Jones’ donation.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com