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All the Jon Jones love in the MMA community drives me nuts. The guy is clearly a very gifted athlete, has an excellent wrestling base, is a quick study and has awesome physical tools, but the guy strikes me as a tool. (Although part of his success is his ability to cut weight. He is a natural heavyweight, and that is what he should really be fighting as.) He reminds me of a Hollywood star who got too much success too early. Who knows if he was a tool at baseline.
Anyway, here is the occasion for this rant. UFC 151, Jones vs. Dan Henderson, has been cancelled (read the comments) due to Henderson sustaining a knee injury. The problem for Jones’ rep is that he was offered Chael Sonnen, a middleweight (natural light heavy), and turned it down. A whole card had to be cancelled, unprecedented in UFC history, because Jones wouldn’t sack up and fight a significantly smaller man. Now he is going to fight Lyoto Machida at UFC 152 instead. I hope Machida kicks him upside his prima donna head, and I bet 99% of the rest of the MMA world is going to feel the same way. This has likely done irreputable harm to Jones’ reputation and rightly so.
BTW, notice that Dana White, who has absolutely no filter, is totally throwing Jon Jones under the bus.
Update: White is punking Jones in the newly updated release:
With Henderson out, White tried to salvage the event before making the decision to pull the plug on the 11 fight card, with one particular loquacious contender willing to step up and take the bout with the youngest champion in UFC history.
“One of the things you’ve heard me brag about a million times is how UFC doesn’t have to cancel events and that we can always find a replacement,” he said. “For somebody to fight Jon Jones on eight days’ notice is tough to do. But to be totally honest, one guy did. Not only when I called him did he say I’ll take the fight, he said I’ll fly to Las Vegas tonight and fight him. And that was Chael Sonnen. Chael Sonnen accepted the fight with Jon Jones, wanted the fight bad, so as of eight, nine o’clock last night, we had a fight. We started working, started creating commercials, PR started getting ready to crank up, but the one thing that I never thought in a million years would happen happened. Jon Jones said I’m not fighting Chael Sonnen with eight days notice.”
If the fight was going to happen, it would have been Sonnen’s first at 205 pounds in the UFC since 2005, but that didn’t deter the self-proclaimed “Gangster from West Linn,” who has poking at Jones on Twitter since moving back to light heavyweight.
“These guys have been talking smack back and forth to each other and I thought it was a fight that people would be interested in, and Chael was the guy who accepted it,” said White. “And Chael was pumped and excited for this fight. In the heat of the moment, when things are going down, this is the guy that you pick up the phone and call, and he will fight anybody.”
Kirt Higdon on 23 Aug 2012 at 11:01 pm #
Sonnen is one of the most obnoxious braggarts in MMA. I’ve read (or more exactly scanned) his book. After being humiliated by Anderson Silva, he had little to lose by going against Jones and he might have gotten very lucky. I doubt if Machida can beat Jones and I agree that the route for Jones is to fight as a heavyweight. He might do that as he gets older and his metabolism slows down but he is still a freak of nature with his extreme ectomorphic physique so he might be able to do well as a heavyweight.
Savrola on 24 Aug 2012 at 1:19 am #
Henderson is a journeyman last used in Fedor’s tune-up fight, I believe.
RedPhillips on 24 Aug 2012 at 1:57 am #
Sonnen was not “humiliated” by Silva. He dominated Silva in the first round. In the second round he slipped and Anderson took advantage of the situation by kneeing him in the chest, a borderline illegal move. Jones knows the kind of threat Chael would have presented.
Nor is he a braggart. He is a trash talker who massively hypes fights. It’s called showmanship.
RedPhillips on 24 Aug 2012 at 1:59 am #
Sav, Henderson beat Fedor, who outweighed him by a lot. The last thing Henderson is is a journeyman. He’s an MMA legend.
Dylan Hales on 24 Aug 2012 at 2:24 am #
Jones would have been a fool to take a fight with an undeserving opponent on such short notice. Dana White is a mentally ill.
Dylan Hales on 24 Aug 2012 at 2:28 am #
Also Sonnen knew about the injury early and was trolling Jones on twitter for a week prior to the announcement. Sonnen has never done anything of note at that weight and it would be a sham for an allegedly competitive sport to reward an athlete with no record in that division with a title match simply because he was “the only one to step up” (something that is an obvious Dana lie).
For the record I can’t stand Jones or Sonnen.
RedPhillips on 24 Aug 2012 at 2:36 am #
Dylan, I don’t know which justification is more obnoxious, that Jones wasn’t ready to fight Sonnen on short notice or that he wouldn’t deign to let an undeserving opponent fight for the title. Had Sonnen beaten him he wouldn’t have been undeserving then, would he?
Dylan Hales on 24 Aug 2012 at 3:13 am #
Actually yes he would of.
It’s my view that conservatives ought to believe in meritocracy, or at least see the value of such a system.
From what I can piece together from the public record and private sources it looks to me like Hendo’s injury was known in advance by Dana, who then leaked it to Sonnen. Sonnen started a Twitter war and likely started training for Jones immediately. When it turned out Hendo couldn’t go, Dana would have you believe he asked other 205 fighters, but there is no serious record of this and great reason to believe that it is a lie. Instead he went to a guy with no record of success at the weight class. A complete affirmative action pick, with one minor difference – he draws money for the company. In other words a wise business move by Dana, but a terrible move for the integrity of the sport.
What I can gather from this is that you really don’t like Jon Jones, which is fine. I don’t like him either. But as someone with many contacts in the business, who has covered the business, I can tell you this is not seen as a “punk” move by anyone (who doesn’t have a clear rooting interest) on the inside.
RedPhillips on 24 Aug 2012 at 3:33 am #
I would like to know who else was asked? Gustafsson? (Who deserved a shot before Machida IMO, and I like Machida a lot.) Weidman?
But as for meritocracy, the UFC is not like the NFL where there is a playoff system. It is more like boxing, where fights are made by promotions on the basis of who deserves a shot AND who will sell tickets.
I am not sure we know the whole truth. I do think it is possible Dana put all his eggs in one basket and just didn’t expect this outcome. I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find anyone other than Sonnen, but I’m not sure Jones would have fought anyone else either.
Dylan Hales on 24 Aug 2012 at 12:12 pm #
For what it’s worth I was told by someone close to the situation that Jones likely wouldn’t have fought anyone, but a big part of the decision was the camps feeling that Dana had colluded with Sonnen behind the scenes before Hendo had officially pulled out.
RedPhillips on 24 Aug 2012 at 12:51 pm #
“Dana had colluded with Sonnen behind the scenes before Hendo had officially pulled out”
I don’t doubt that at all. The twitter stuff is fishy. But regardless, whether it was considered a “punk move” on the inside or not, the dude is getting brutalized on the internet and that is what matters for his reputation. MMA, more than any other sport I know of, is internet driven. Has been since the beginning when it was considered underground and cultish.
Kirt Higdon on 24 Aug 2012 at 2:59 pm #
I’m wondering if there might not be some financial issue behind Jones’s unwillingness to fight Sonnen. I have no idea how the UFC works financially; maybe Dylan Hales can help us out on that. I do think that whenever a big business deal falls apart, it’s very often because the parties involved could not reach agreement on how the money would be split up. Was White trying to make Jones take less money for fighting Sonnen instead of Hendo? Of course, on this particular deal it’s lose/lose for Jones and White. But Jones is pretty much at the beginning of what could be a long and successful career and may want to establish early on that he can’t be discounted. I’m just speculating, but it would be interesting to know for sure.
pinksheet panther on 25 Aug 2012 at 7:05 am #
I think Jones was wise to not take the fight on such short notice. It shows that he takes these fights very seriously and prepares for them accordingly. Though some of them might be dumb as a bag of hammers, I wouldn’t call any of these guys chicken. Though there might be a new genre of fans: MMA chicken hawks.
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