This weekend’s battle between current UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones and former champion Rashad Evans was destined to be the biggest fight of the year.
Months in the making, this drama between friends turned enemies has turned into MMA‘s version of a real life soap opera.
No one could have scripted better the rapid rift between Evans and the Greg Jackson camp or the deterioration of his friendship with Jones. However, like all historic fights, the stars somehow seem to align to create the perfect mix of real drama and an amazing matchup of styles.
The magnitude of the Jones-Evans bout couldn’t have reached this status without some help. Despite the vast amount of events the UFC has scheduled this year, there are very few big-name bouts that can contend with the size of this weekend’s headliners.
One challenger would have been the heavyweight battle between UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos and challenger Alistar Overeem. However, Overeem’s failed drug test has likely doomed this UFC 146 headlining fight.
The next obvious contender, a bout that UFC president Dana White thinks is one of the biggest sporting events of the year, would be a rematch between UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and challenger Chael Sonnen.
Most would agree that this fight, tentatively scheduled for UFC 147, would be the biggest fight of 2012. However, the Silva-Sonnen beef just feels contrived.
Silva, although motivated to defeat his nemesis once again, has never really shown an interest in trading verbal jabs with his loud-mouth opponent. Sonnen, on the other hand, has acted in a manner that clearly was just meant to gain attention.
While his ploy worked, Sonnen’s tactics just feel too WWE and lack a certain realism, a notion amplified by Silva’s lackluster responses to Sonnen’s antics.
Between Jones and Evans, the tension is all too real. If you’ve watched any of the number of overplayed hype videos by the UFC, these guys have never wavered in expressing their disdain for each other.
UFC commentator Joe Rogan noted that the tension in the air was eerie when these two last met in the cage following Jones’ latest title defense.
This intersecting of personal problems with professional aspirations has virtually done the UFC’s work for them in terms of hyping the fight.
While a product of the perfect storm of real-life drama and the falling through of some other premier bouts, Jones versus Evans will go down as the biggest fight of 2012.
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