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LOOKING AT THE UFC 151 FIASCO

In just a few short days, I was supposed to park myself in front of my Gateway laptop and provide live coverage of UFC 151 to the readers of PWInsiderXtra. Then the shocking announcement came from UFC President Dana White on August 23rd that UFC Light Heavyweight Title top contender Dan Henderson suffered an MCL injury and has been pulled from UFC 151. After that announcement came the major shocker, UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones refused to fight former middleweight contender Chael Sonnen and the entire UFC 151 event had been cancelled.

That cancellation sent shockwaves throughout the MMA universe because it was the first time that a UFC event had been cancelled since Zuffa took over eleven years ago. Dana White was quick to blast his UFC Light Heavyweight Champion and his trainer, Greg Jackson, saying that the famous MMA trainer is ruining the sport. Whether or not that statement is actually true is to be debated, but just having the UFC President say something that bold is quite a statement in itself. So, when it is all said and done, this coming weekend’s cancelled UFC 151 event may go down as the biggest black eye in the promotions history.

Let’s start with the top of the light heavyweight mountain with Jon Jones, who’s overall refusal to fight Chael Sonnen lead to the event being axed. Is Jon Jones really the man to blame for all of this or is the champion simply a victim of outstanding circumstances? While it is a rare situation to have a change of opponent with just a few days to train, it is not an uncommon situation. In fact, it has actually happened in the UFC a few times, most notably at UFC On Fuel TV IV when Charlie Brenneman stepped in on less than a days’ notice to fight (and later defeat) Rick Story. Also, many years back at UFC 47, Wes Simms took a fight against Mike Kyle on less than a day’s notice, he ended up losing that fight.

Personally, I can understand if Jon Jones did not want to defend his title against a new opponent, but then why not fight in a non-title fight? Although a potential upset loss to Chael Sonnen would have led to an obvious rematch, he still would have held onto the gold and would have had extra prep time for the rematch. Champions do not necessarily have to defend the gold every time they fight, just look at the title holders in the Bellator Fighting Championships.

Now, if Jon Jones is the bad guy in this situation, what does that make Greg Jackson, the man responsible for training Jon Jones and the person who ultimately convinced the champion to turn down a fight with Chael Sonnen. In a sense, Greg Jackson may be the mastermind behind the entire cancellation of the September 1st event. According to Dana White, it was Greg Jackson who told Jon Jones that fighting Chael Sonnen is a pretty insane choice to make. Depending on your perspective on the whole situation, Greg Jackson was either keeping his fighter from making a stupid decision or screwing over the loyal UFC fans that have supported his fighters in the past.

Now, if there are a pair of evil villains in this interesting story of ours…then there must be a few heroes as well. Those heroes would go by the names of Chael Sonnen, UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva and even Chris Weidman. Why are those three the heroes of the story, because they were all willing to step in and save the day in their own way.

Chael Sonnen is probably the biggest hero of them all because he was willing to fight the current UFC Light Heavyweight Champion with under a week’s preparation time. What makes the scenario even more impressive is that Chael Sonnen was visiting his girlfriend’s father in the hospital as the man had suffered a stroke. Like all the other fighters in our story here, Chael Sonnen got his opportunity turned down and he will have to wait until his December fight against Forrest Griffin to entertain us all once again.

UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva is a favorite for this article as well because the middleweight champion was willing to fight any light heavyweight the UFC can find in less than a week’s notice. This is particularly interesting because the champion declared a few weeks earlier that he would not be competing again until 2013. The sad portion of this effort from Anderson Silva is that his management team was too late in contacting the UFC, which had already decided to cancel the event.

Another middleweight in the undefeated Chris Weidman was also in contact with the UFC to save UFC 151 from eternal doom, but like Anderson Silva, was also too late for the UFC’s good.

Either way it is chopped up folks, here is the bottom line from the UFC 151 fiasco…a UFC Light Heavyweight Champion turned down a fight that caused twenty fighters to miss a paycheck in the end and perhaps that is the biggest fiasco of them all.