Henderson got injured. sonnen offered to step in, but greg jackson supposedly turned it down. dana's really pissed at jackson. jones vs. machida II scheduled for sept. 22nd in canada.
Terrible news, but I'm glad that Dan didn't try to fight anyway just to keep the event going, then lose and blame it on his knee. Dan's going to need to be at 100% to fight Jones if he has any chance of winning. He did the right thing here. I bet Jones is not happy about fighting Machida, he already stated two weeks ago that he didn't want to fight him again.
Chael wouldn't have been ready anyway and he didn't really deserve a shot at the title at 205 so its good that he didn't get the shot.
well, dana wanted the fight to happen. jackson didnt want it because he felt that jones wasn't ready for chael's style or whatever. regardless, this is the first time ufc ever canceled the entire event.
whether it was jones or jackson, whoseever decision it was not to accept the fight against sonnen (would've been an easy W for jones imo) just cost the promotion a lot of $. dana is extremely pissed. he called jackson a sports killer or some shit. haha
It's the UFC and Dana White's damn fault. They shoudn't depend on one fight to sell a card. That's what the fucking assholes get for putting together a garbage card with one good fight that was carrying the thing. If they stacked the card like they should for a near 60 dollar PPV, this woulnd't be an issue. They would move another fight into the main event and pull up a fight from the undercard to the main card. Dana is mad because he blew it!
yea, but why wouldnt jones take the fight against sonnen? on paper, it's an easy fight. also he gets to shut sonnen up for all them shit talk through tweet.
It's such an easy fight I wouldn't even bother buying the PPV. It's shit, I don't blame Jones. Chael deserves nothing and nobody is falling for his BS anymore.
There is no good excuse for Jones's side to have a problem fighting Chael as a replacement. What exactly are you going to do differently in preparation? The quick answer is nothing.
Agreed, Chael doesn't bring anything new to the table that Dan didn't already have. In fact, you could argue that Dan was a much more dangerous and well rounded opponent.
The truth is Jones felt like Chael didn't deserve a shot, he didn't like Chael talking shit about him and said Chael wasn't going to talk his way into a title shot. I'm sure that had more to do with it than anything else. He was just being an ass to prove a point to Chael.
I agree with that. Jones is a pretty complete fighter and accomplished wrestler, and CHael is a one dimensional wrestler. And guess what, Henderson is a fucking wrestler too :: I agree, his training would have been no different. Bizarre decision by Jackson/Jones. Henderson is a much better fighter than Sonnen anyway, I'd undoubtedly give Dan a better chance. I'd give Sonnen about a 0.1% chance.
fuck sonnen. jones made the right move. that cheating faggot doesnt deserve more money. didnt he just get destroyed? this just goes to show dana white cannot dictate everything when dealing with a fighter who has some actual leverage. a sign of things to come.
Who cares though really? Who's wants to spend 50 bucks to watch a guy who just got destroyed at a lower weight class get an immediate title shot at 205 against a guy he has zero chance of beating? It's not PPV worthy, it wasn't even PPV worth when Henderson was in, let alone now.
I like watching Jones fight. I care. Sonnen didn't get 'destroyed'. He won another round against the 'best fighter in the world' and then got thighed in the chin (arguably illegally) and beaten. Shit happens. But I hate cheating pieces of shit and Sonnen is a cheating POS, so whatever. My point was that Jones doesn't have a legit reason to balk and he doesn't. If this is the first snowball in an avalanche revolt against the UFC then great. I don't believe it is, though. Jones is probably having a hard time making weight and just using this as an excuse or something like that.
Obviously Henderson getting hurt sucks, but this isn't really a bad thing. UFC 151 had a great main event and nothing else. UFC 152 didn't even have that. Benevidaz vs Johnson would've been lucky to sell 100k buys as a PPV main event. Now they took two crappy cards and can combine them into one decent one. TFK
Or two in this case. The UFC really needs to slow down a bit. They just don't have the depth in talent to run as many shows as they are, and the product is suffering because of it. Between the Fox shows, Fuel shows and FX shows, to expect people to pay good money to see 1-2 PPV's a month is just unrealistic, especially when the cards aren't loaded. It wasn't long ago that every UFC card was a 'must see' event. Now, often I'm saying to myself 'Another card? Already?' I know the UFC is contractually committed to air X number of shows on the Fox networks, and they are making big money from that contract. So nothing should change there. But they really need to cut PPV's down to 8 to 10 a year. I'm more apt to buy a PPV if A, it's a deeper card, and B, if I didn't just pay for a PPV 3 weeks ago and have another one coming up in another 3. TFK
I just read that it's still going to be 152. I guess for marketing reasons, it's too late to change. I'm kind of pissed at Dana White over this, he's really being a big ass crybaby about it. As far as I'm concerned, this is what they get for trying to pass off shit cards as PPV.
I wonder how many other 205'ers actually turned down the fight before White called Sonnen? I am on the fence about Jones. He's becoming a bit of a diva. First he says he doesn't want to fight Machida next because it's big risk/little reward. And now he turns down a fight with Sonnen? It's not about prep or strategy with Jones. I honestly he just wanted to show Sonnen who the boss is. By the way, anyone else think Greg Jackson is MMA cancer? The dude has turned a bunch of entertaining fighters into safety-first boring fighters.
Interesting that they are just going to erase 151. I think it does speak to the lack of depth on the card as already pointed out. Trivia: Since they turned Belfort/Liddell into like 38.5, the numbering will actually match up with the number of events from now on. Dana is all butthurt, but Jones isn't going to get one speck of grief from fans over this. I think everyone at this point in time would rather see him fight Machida again than fight Sonnen. I like Jones, but I do look forward to him losing and Machida has a realistic chance to make it happen.
Just like Triplsec said. UFC are watering down their product by doing so many PPV's. Those should be done bi-monthly and in between they can air the free shows.
That's what I was thinking too. Sonnen's been running his mouth about Jones, and Jones just trumped any trash talk Sonnen could've spit out. Besides, I can't think of one good reason Sonnen should get a title shot at 205. TFK
A good reason is that he is probably the 2nd best middleweight. Being considered the 2nd best (or worse) guy in the weightclass below the title shot weightclass has been a good enough reason to justify many title shots in boxing without objection.
