Jeremy Botter: The UFC often holds their press conferences and other events in easy-to-find locations. That was probably also the case today, but in Atlanta, nothing is easy to find. Not even depending upon my trusty old GPS delivered Jonathan and I to the destination without a little bit of backtracking and headshaking.
All told, we finally found the Park Tavern, just off a large parcel of land that appears to be a combination golf course and festival ground. I say festival ground because they’re in the process of either setting up or tearing down what appears to be a large carnival. I made a mental note to myself to come back and check it out, even though I despise carnivals for reasons that I won’t get into here.
We walked into the park tavern, where our gracious UFC hosts had a decent lunch spread waiting. I did the only prudent thing, however, and went straight for the chocolate chip cookies. It was a good decision.
I caught up with a few media cohorts that I haven’t seen in awhile, and then set down for the press conference. We’ll expand on the actual press conference itself later today, but needless to say, it was fairly uneventful. Jones and Evans no longer have the fire towards one another that existed even a month ago, and it didn’t make for an interesting event.
As one person close to Evans told me: “He’s tired of it. He just wants to fight.” And I think we all pretty much feel the same way at this point. The trash-talking has been done to death. Now I want to see these two fighters test themselves against each other, and nothing more.