Tag: UFC 151

Mr. White Takes His UFC 151 Ball and Goes Home

Now that the smoke has settled on the cancellation of UFC 151, I’m convinced that this is the most idiotic decision in the history of the modern UFC. I’m tired of reading that this is.

Now that the smoke has settled on the cancellation of UFC 151, I’m convinced that this is the most idiotic decision in the history of the modern UFC. I’m tired of reading that this is Jon Jones’ fault. I’m tired of reading that this is Greg Jackson’s fault. They both did exactly what they should have done and anyone who disagrees lacks a fundamental understanding of what it takes to prepare for a championship fight in the UFC. How is Jones supposed to watch tape, gameplan and then drill that gameplan in three days, which is how much actual training time he would have had before the onset of his media commitments? Yes, Jones could probably beat Sonnen nine times out of ten even without proper preparation but why take any risk at all at this point in his career? He didn’t create this situation and it isn’t his responsibility to fix it.

The people who did create this situation are Dan Henderson, Team Quest and Dana White. Hey, Dan Henderson and Team Quest. How about you tell the UFC as soon as soon as an injury occurs so that they can prepare a backup plan in case Henderson can’t go? Hey, Dana White. How about you not react in the least professional way possible? Here’s a step by step breakdown of Mr. White’s reaction. One, freak out. Two, call Jon Jones and try to strong arm him into taking a fight against Chael Sonnen with three days of real training time to prepare. Three, double down on your freak out when Jones declines the fight and throw your most marketable asset under an oncoming semi truck full of matches and gasoline in front of every microphone that happens to be in range of your spittle spewing lips. Four, cancel the entire event screwing all the other fighters on the card as well as fans who paid for tickets and travel, vendors, event staff, PPV providers etc.

Anything would have been better than what happened here. Have Anderson Silva fight Joe 205er. Have Jones fight Sonnen in a non-title fight with Sonnen guaranteed a title shot if he pulls off the upset. Find two in shape name guys and throw together a catch weight fight. Move the fight to free TV. Drop the price of the PPV and partially refund ticket prices. Anything other than this immature nonsense. I’ll take any bet that if Mr. White would have put out the word that Henderson was scratched and the card needed a headlining fight within 48 hours or the card was going to be cancelled altogether, a solution would have presented itself. Instead, he made a ridiculous worst case scenario snap decision.

Dana White has done some great things in his time overseeing the UFC. This is not one of them. Hopefully, everyone involved learns lessons about the importance of having a second fight that can carry the card and immediate notification of serious injuries. This is a scenario that cannot be repeated if the UFC hopes to continue its explosive growth.

Jon Jones Fallout: 8 Fighters That Took Fights on Very Short Notice and Won

When challenger Dan Henderson was forced out of his title contest at UFC 151, UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones shocked the world when he denied Dana White’s request to battle late-replacement Chael Sonnen in the main event.The UFC-sponsored fig…

When challenger Dan Henderson was forced out of his title contest at UFC 151, UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones shocked the world when he denied Dana White‘s request to battle late-replacement Chael Sonnen in the main event.

The UFC-sponsored fighter upset the MMA world as a whole with his selfish decision, which ultimately culminated in the first event cancellation in UFC history.

In light of Jones’ refusal to fight Sonnen at UFC 151, I’d like to take a look back on some previous fights where a fill-in opponent arrived and scored a big win.

Here is a peek at eight fighters who took fights on short notice and won.

Begin Slideshow

Jon Jones Finally Returns to Twitter After UFC 151 Cancellation News

After several days of silence on Twitter, Jon Jones has returned to face the angry masses that he has been conspicuously avoiding since the announcement of UFC 151’s cancellation. In case you somehow missed it, Dan Henderson injured his knee and was no…

After several days of silence on Twitter, Jon Jones has returned to face the angry masses that he has been conspicuously avoiding since the announcement of UFC 151‘s cancellation.

In case you somehow missed it, Dan Henderson injured his knee and was no longer available to face Jones at UFC 151. Lyoto Machida refused to fight Jones on short notice, which left Chael Sonnen as the only viable opponent—from a marketing perspective—for Jones.

Jones remained mum on Twitter, even though he is typically quite active on the social media site. Before these last few moments, Jones’ only post was a safe retweet of his official statement to MMAJunkie.com.

Now, though, he is offering his condolences and apologies on Twitter.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”>

Carrying the cross for my company’s decision. If someone has to take the blame, I will accept full responsibility for the way UFC 151

— Jon Bones Jones (@JonnyBones) August 25, 2012

 

 

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”>

was canceled. I want to sincerely apologize to all the other athletes/fans who’s time and money was waisted.

— Jon Bones Jones (@JonnyBones) August 25, 2012

 

 

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”>

I feel terrible about the way that was handled.

— Jon Bones Jones (@JonnyBones) August 25, 2012

 

 

The posts will undoubtedly do little to silence the clanging, hate-fueled machine that has been unleashed on Jones by UFC president Dana White. The fact that he is declaring himself the martyr of the whole situation certainly will not help.

White, meanwhile, has spent some time going back and forth with fans, but took the opportunity to take a shot or two at Jones.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC Begins to Transplant Canceled UFC 151 Bouts. Spoiler Alert: None End Up On PPV.


Pictured: Their approximate reactions to finding out “garbage-ass” was a real phrase.

One week ago, Ben published an article voicing concerns over how weak UFC 151’s main card was. But it was cool, because Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson was going to be such an awesome fight. Two days ago, Jones vs. Henderson was scrapped and UFC 151 was canceled. [Ed. note: Damn, two days? Feels like we’ve been covering this forever.] Even though most of us acknowledged that the cancellation of the event was at least partially due to the garbage-assness of pretty much the entire card, we were too busy talking about Jon Jones ducking Chael Sonnen/Sonnen attempting to troll his way into an immediate title shot (depending on which side of the fence you’re on) to really delve into the issue. But now that the UFC has started to transplant the canceled UFC 151 fights to other cards, it’s time to take a closer look at that issue for a moment.

The bouts from UFC 151 are quickly being rescheduled for different cards, with UFC on FX 5 taking a significant chunk of them. As we covered in yesterday’s link dump, UFC 151’s planned co-main event, Jake Ellenberger vs. Jay Hieron, will now be the co-main event of UFC On FX 5. This won’t be the only fight from UFC 151’s main card that will now be padding UFC on FX 5 – Dennis Hallman vs. Thiago Tavares, Danny Castillo vs. Michael Johnson and Shane Roller vs. Jacob Volkmann will be moved to this card as well. UFC on Fuel TV 6 will now be featuring fights between bantamweights Takeya Mizugaki and Jeff Hougland and flyweights John Lineker and Yasuhiro Urushitani, while Kyle Noke and Charlie Brenneman will do the man dance on the undercard of UFC 152.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s worth mentioning that absolutely none of these fights – three of which were on the pay-per-view portion of UFC 151, mind you – have made it to the main card of an upcoming pay-per-view. Now I understand that financially, most fighters who were expecting a paycheck on September 1 simply can’t afford to wait until November’s UFC 154 to fight again. But that’s not the issue: The issue is that the UFC could afford to move pay-per-view quality fights *makes this hand gesture* to free television in the first place.


Pictured: Their approximate reactions to finding out “garbage-ass” was a real phrase.

One week ago, Ben published an article voicing concerns over how weak UFC 151′s main card was. But it was cool, because Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson was going to be such an awesome fight. Two days ago, Jones vs. Henderson was scrapped and UFC 151 was canceled. [Ed. note: Damn, two days? Feels like we’ve been covering this forever.] Even though most of us acknowledged that the cancellation of the event was at least partially due to the garbage-assness of pretty much the entire card, we were too busy talking about Jon Jones ducking Chael Sonnen/Sonnen attempting to troll his way into an immediate title shot (depending on which side of the fence you’re on) to really delve into the issue. But now that the UFC has started to transplant the canceled UFC 151 fights to other cards, it’s time to take a closer look at that issue for a moment.

The bouts from UFC 151 are quickly being rescheduled for different cards, with UFC on FX 5 taking a significant chunk of them. As we covered in yesterday’s link dump, UFC 151′s planned co-main event, Jake Ellenberger vs. Jay Hieron, will now be the co-main event of UFC On FX 5. This won’t be the only fight from UFC 151′s main card that will now be padding UFC on FX 5 – Dennis Hallman vs. Thiago Tavares, Danny Castillo vs. Michael Johnson and Shane Roller vs. Jacob Volkmann will be moved to this card as well. UFC on Fuel TV 6 will now be featuring fights between bantamweights Takeya Mizugaki and Jeff Hougland and flyweights John Lineker and Yasuhiro Urushitani, while Kyle Noke and Charlie Brenneman will do the man dance on the undercard of UFC 152.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s worth mentioning that absolutely none of these fights – three of which were on the pay-per-view portion of UFC 151, mind you – have made it to the main card of an upcoming pay-per-view. Now I understand that financially, most fighters who were expecting a paycheck on September 1 simply can’t afford to wait until November’s UFC 154 to fight again. But that’s not the issue: The issue is that the UFC could afford to move pay-per-view quality fights *makes this hand gesture* to free television in the first place.

Dana White can point his fingers at Jon Jones and Greg Jackson and say “That’s the bad guy!” all he wants, but that certainly doesn’t make him the good guy in all of this. The fact that the UFC can give away bouts that they expected you to pay for without worrying about the revenue they’ll lose is essentially an admission that the bouts were never really worth your money in the first place. Essentially, it’s proof that, as we feared, over-saturation has reached its tipping point in the UFC and as a result, the main event of any given pay-per-view is the only fight worth paying for. Gone are the days when a fighter in the co-main event of a UFC pay-per-view was too big of a name for basic cable (Isn’t that right, Mike Russow?). It’s easy to make Jon Jones and Greg Jackson the scapegoats for the cancellation of UFC 151, but it’s nothing short of willful ignorance to continue to deny that over-saturation is a pandemic in the UFC.

With Jones vs. Belfort now headlining UFC 152 (151?), Dana White will more than likely use the “stacked” UFC 152 as “proof” that the UFC is still putting on stacked cards and that over-saturation is not an issue. On paper, he has a point; it’s hard to say that a card with two title fights isn’t a quality product. But let’s actually look at what we’re getting: A light-heavyweight title fight where the challenger earned the honor of fighting for a belt by simply being the first guy to say “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it,” a flyweight title fight that fans weren’t exactly excited for in the first place, and a middleweight scrap between two top-ten fighters who probably still won’t be getting a shot at Anderson Silva with a victory. Call me crazy, but I’m not seeing a stacked card here. I’m seeing a card that, up until Jon Jones was added on, was weaker than UFC 151.

I guess it would be pretty ironic of me to let the comments section fill up with complaints about how boxing died because champions were fighting unworthy challengers and the “one-fight cards” that ruined the sport. But to do that would be missing my own point, so instead I’ll propose a new rule: From now on, if you aren’t willing to complain with your wallet, you forfeit your right to complain with your keyboard. That should be enough to force the UFC to acknowledge over-saturation, and admission is the first step to recovery.

@SethFalvo

UFC 151: A Sober Look at a Cautionary Tale for the Ages

Has everyone calmed down? OK, fantastic.Now that the Interwebz has recovered from yesterday’s near critical mass explosion of resentment towards Jon Jones and Greg Jackson, we can examine the demise of UFC 151 with something approaching perspecti…

Has everyone calmed down? OK, fantastic.

Now that the Interwebz has recovered from yesterday’s near critical mass explosion of resentment towards Jon Jones and Greg Jackson, we can examine the demise of UFC 151 with something approaching perspective.

Who can we really blame for Thursday’s insanity? Quite honestly, everyone shares a portion of the blame for a situation that was both regrettable and comical, all at once.

Dana White’s impromptu propaganda campaign may have succeeded in shifting most of the blame onto the pair from Albuquerque, but no one came out of this mess smelling of roses.

Given the UFC’s deal with Fox and the resulting strain on the roster, the likes of Dana White and Joe Silva must accept some of the backlash for allowing their events to be so top-heavy. It should never be the case that the loss of one bout is enough to tank an entire show, even if it is the main event.

Jones and Jackson cannot be blamed for the fact that UFC 151 lacked a sufficiently compelling supporting cast. That particular error falls squarely on the UFC’s shoulders. They put all their eggs in one basket, crossed their fingers and hoped for the best.

Considering the UFC’s current injury epidemic, what on earth compelled the UFC brass to base their marketing strategy on promoting a solitary fight? That is not the Zuffa model; that is the boxing approach to event promotion.

The UFC promotes fight cards, rather than just main events. People pay with the expectation of enjoying a couple hours of entertainment, rather than just 25 minutes.

Hopefully Dana White comes to his senses and when his blood pressure returns to human levels, realizes that his reaction yesterday was more over the top than a Nicolas Cage performance.

With all that said, Jones must also accept some of the blame here.

While he was under no obligation to accept the fight with Sonnen, he could have taken one for the team. Indeed, carrying an event on one’s shoulders comes with certain responsibilities. Pressure is a privilege, as they say.

However, it seems that the 205-pound king wants all of the glory and none of the responsibility. He was aware that the entire event hinged on his answer, yet he declined to participate for reasons that I still struggle to comprehend.

There appears to be no middle ground when it comes to Dana White. If you do him a solid, he will pay you back in spades. If you refuse to play ball, he will throw you under the bus without hesitation. Just ask “Shogun” Rua.

And why did the current light heavyweight champ turn down a fight with an out of shape middleweight? It was apparently a decision based on the advice of Greg Jackson, who suggested that it would be the worst decision of Jones’ career.

Not since Rich Franklin told Matt Serra to start a fight on his knees has someone handed out such lamentably “lemon” advice.

Jones would have had every advantage had he taken the bout, even on eight days notice. What would he really gain by waiting? Everyone knows how Sonnen fights. He looks to close the distance immediately and clinch up.

By exhibiting such obscene caution, Jones has not only irritated his employer. He has also succeeded in tanking his already shaky reputation with the sport’s fanbase. Even if he had the right to turn down the fight, his decision was ill-advised in every sense.

In truth, every single decision that led to yesterday’s sorry state of affairs was an absolute howler. Years from now, Dana White’s progeny will likely tell terrifying bedtime stories about the ill-fated event.

UFC 151 is a cautionary tale for the ages.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

MMA: Power Ranking August’s 10 Best Fights

The month of August featured some events that could turn fans off from the sport of mixed martial arts. Former Strikeforce champion Jake Shields turned in a lackluster performance in his return to middleweight, Anderson Silva is seemingly disinterested…

The month of August featured some events that could turn fans off from the sport of mixed martial arts. Former Strikeforce champion Jake Shields turned in a lackluster performance in his return to middleweight, Anderson Silva is seemingly disinterested in fighting No. 1 contender Chris Weidman, the injury bug continues to ravage countless fight cards and UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones made a selfish decision that caused UFC 151 to be canceled entirely.

In times like these, it can be easy to miss the MMA high points of August 2012. However, at Bleacher Report, we never forget the incredible achievements created by the sport we love.

Here is a look at the 10 best fights of the month.

Begin Slideshow