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Jon Jones: “It surprised me, the whole UFC 151 backlash.”
By Zach Arnold | September 18, 2012
“I still stand by the decision that I made. My job is mainly just to be strong and to be a man and stand by the decisions that I make.”
So, the storylines heading into this weekend’s no-momentum UFC 152 show are…
a) Jon Jones/Dana White on-again, off-again back-and-forth over whether or not Jones ‘murdered the sport’ of MMA by not fighting Chael Sonnen on 9/1 in Las Vegas on short notice.
b) Chael Sonnen ramping up training in West Linn because Vitor Belfort is a flake and not to be fully trusted to make the fight booking against Jon Jones. Plus, Sonnen potentially working a show where the UFC is reportedly running the drug testing because Ken Hayashi’s Ontario commission isn’t going to drug test the fighters this time around. I guess this means Jones, who didn’t want to fight Sonnen on short notice for the 9/1 Las Vegas show, could end up fighting Sonnen on the 9/22 Toronto show… on short notice.
c) Jones started out as a 13-to-1 favorite (91%) against Belfort but now has dropped to an 8-to-1 favorite (88%), therefore somehow signifying just how much more competitive this fight has become.
d) Brian Stann vs. Michael Bisping, a fight on paper that looked to have some appeal to the masses, just not captivating many folks
e) Dana saying: “Fight week! Jones vs. Belfort! This if for u the REAL fans. We love u guys!!!” As our friend MMA Supremacy replied, “In other words… it’s not trending so hot right now, so we need you guys to buy this and help us out!!!” Do it for Dana White, because UFC 100 was a great show.
Other than that, everything is coming up roses for Saturday’s show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Air Canada Centre.
Undercard
- Welterweights: Charlie Brenneman vs. Kyle Noke
- Bantamweights: Walel Watson vs. Mitch Gagnon
- Welterweights: Seth Baczynski vs. Simeon Thoresen
- Featherweights: Jimy Hettes vs. Marcus Brimage
- Welterweights: Lance Benoist vs. Sean Pierson
- Lightweights: Evan Dunham vs. TJ Grant
- Light Heavyweights: Igor Pokrajac vs. Vinny Magalhaes
Main card
- Featherweights: Cub Swanson vs. Charles Oliveira
- Light Heavyweights: Matt Hamill vs. Roger Hollett
- Middleweights: Brian Stann (+150) vs. Michael Bisping (-180, 9 to 5 favorite)
- UFC Flyweight title match: Joe Benavidez (-300, 3 to 1 favorite) vs. Demetrious Johnson (+220)
- UFC Light Heavyweight champion Jon Jones (-800, 8 to 1 favorite) vs. Vitor Belfort (+500)
Topics: Canada, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 48 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
151 was garbage, but Saturday’s fight is a solid card all the way through. Why all the snarkiness about it?
The main event. It’s such a mismatch. I agree the card is good from top to bottom.
The main event was a bonus addition to an already good card.
Very true. That’s why I think it’s a good card. I was just answering your question.
I really like this card. Sure the main even is a squash, but it should be fun for a round. And the rest of the PPV Main Card should be quality.
Religion can do some weird stuff to the reality of a persons mind. Jones should put down the bible and do some critical thinking on why he is such a hated person right now. What a great fighter he is, but also a mental midget.
All Jones needed to do was to not be apologetic for acting in his own self-interest.
Trying to change the state of an upset, emotional group isn’t easy. He should’ve been quieter and waited it out.
Silence would have been the best option. It is easy to see why his publicist quit before the UFC 151 thing happened. Jones is pretty much teaching a class on what not to do when hit with negative media backlash.
That line on Jones/Belfort is a gift from the gods.
Flyweights, Matt Hamill and Vitor Belfort. Ah, how I miss the days when the card actually featured world’s best competing against each other.
The fighters you cited (Jones, Bisping-Stann) are the actual reasons I want to see this card.
I could definitely agree with you on Hamill and Belfort (at this point in his career) but D. Johnson and Benavidez? Gotta disagree with you there. Those two are basically the two best flyweights out there. Should be a great fight.
Oh, I agree that they are the best … flyweights. Which is kind of like saying they are the world’s tallest midgets. I have little interest in seeing the under-lightweight classes, I would rather we rather we get more of the five divisions and the really talented smaller fighters can try their hand at beating men who are bigger than they are.
Wait…..I though Matt Hamill retired? Guess the money was too good to pass up? No real back-up plan? Missed the adrenaline rush? Speaking of…..over/under on Kole Conrad staying retired?
How many guys in this era retired and stayed retired? Chris Lytle is the best argument and he’s been retired a whopping 13 months. Give him time.
Oh, very true. Terry Funk and Ric Flair were running through my head this entire time…
A Hettes, Oliveira, Jones parlay looks mighty nice.
Benevidez/Johnson and Oliveira /Swanson are competitive fights, but it isn’t what you would call a good UFC fight card. We are still a few more good, solid event cancellations away from getting there.
Benevidez vs. Johnson is just a competitive fight? It’s #1 vs. #2 in the world. It doesn’t get much better then that.
You know how even you talk about 135 and 145 being in states of flux and change because they’re so new and the guys so untested? OK. So multiply that by several factors and make the top flyweights in the world guys everyone has seen fight at the second tier of bantamweight to varying degrees of success. Neither guy is a P4P level talent and we all know it. Really all this does is set up a fight a year or two down the road with someone new who might be hopefully.
“So multiply that by several factors and make the top flyweights in the world guys everyone has seen fight at the second tier of bantamweight to varying degrees of success.”
Explain how two guys that are a combined 30-4 at BW (with three losses to the #1 fighter there, and top 5-6 PFP fighter) have fought at the second tier of BW with varying degrees of success.
Demetrious Johnson might not be a PFP talent, but if Joe wins (and does it impressively) he most definitely belongs in the PFP top ten.
edub is right. Said basically exactly what I was typing until I read his post.
Benevidez was a Top 5 Bantamweight. Johnson was Top 10. The only thing that hurt both of these guys at BW was their size. They are both highly proven already under the Zuffa banner, despite this being the 1st Flyweight Title Fight.
Explain how two guys that are a combined 30-4 at BW (with three losses to the #1 fighter there, and top 5-6 PFP fighter) have fought at the second tier of BW with varying degrees of success.
They’re a tier below the elite guys at the weight. They’re not Barao, they’re not Faber, they’re not Cruz. They’re very good fighters in a division that is pretty weak and is still in the midst of seeing talent fall to it as a result of its inclusion in the UFC. That they have a division that has been created which they now inhabit and is closer to their natural weight, and which they excel at is wonderful, but the weight class at 125 is even weaker than 135. It is probably weaker than heavyweight. So yeah, neither guy is an amazing P4P talent. They’re fun fighters, and I’m sure this fight will be pretty decent or something, but like I’ve said before, you could have done this bout at any point in the last three years at bantamweight and it wouldn’t have been really any different. There’s just a belt materialized out of thin air this time that somehow separates it.
Let’s put this a different way. If Jake Shields fought Hector Lombard for the new UFC Light Middleweight crown at 178 after a 4 man tournament where they won their first two bouts, would it “get much better than that”?
Shields has already competed at Welterweight, so really bad example.
LOL that’s irrelevant. Make it Vitor or Bisping or whoever you want that isn’t Anderson. Change it for a Nick Diaz/Josh Koscheck 162lb Super Lightweight title. You can make a list of these a mile long.
You are making up weight classes to prove your point. Which shows your point isn’t particularly good.
All of your examples are of fighters who are competing while SMALLER weight classes already existed. Lightweight existed while Shields competed at Welterweight. Welterweight exists while Lombard competes at Middleweight. So on and so forth.
Benevidez and Johnson literally had no options to move to Flyweight outside of the tiny pay of minor league company promoting those fights. Which is why them moving down and fighting for a title is 100 times more meaningful then any of the examples you can provide…
Of course I\’m making up weight classes. That’s what this is. The UFC making up a 125lb weight class and two guys from 135 fighting in it. If you built a cruiserweight/super middleweight/super welterweight/etc division it would probably be made out of guys who flopped at other weight classes moving up or down and competing for a belt, just like this is. The general public basically doesn’t care for that reason. I don’t really care either.
His point is completely baseless as there is a very marketable (and probably tougher) division under 185lbs. 170lbs is an established division. 125lbs is not, and it is being built.
This isn’t a case of a new division being implemented between others (like when SMW was created in boxing for example), which is what your comparisons would apply to more.
LOL this page has eaten like three replies.
Look, if you built a super middleweight division, you’d probably have guys that were too small for light heavyweight glory coming down and taking the belts there. Which could make for a great fight: Shogun/Rashad Evans would be a wonderful 195lb fight. Neither has ever fought at 185 and both have fought as high as heavyweight, so that isn’t as outrageous as a scenario. That being said, it would be no different; creating a division, having guys that are too small to be competitive with the champ (and in some cases the top 3-5) fight for the vacant belt in said division. And people would respond to it for what it was. This fight doesn’t even have the rub of being produced from a glory division like 205.
Yea, it tends to do that with the longer posts. Hella annoying. Normally if you just post something like “reply lost” Zach will find/post it.
We will have to completely disagree then. Acting like guys too small for one division, but too big for another is the same thing as guys fighting at 135 because 125 didn’t exist in the UFC until earlier this year is something I don’t see any logic in.
Of course there could be some fun fights at 195, but there could also be fun fights at 220, 178, 163, and 150. Alot of these would probably draw more attention than Benavidez vs. Johnson. However, that doesn’t mean they would matter as much considering 125 has been around most places outside of the big leagues of the USA (and JB-MM is a battle of the top two in the world).
Ed. — We got hit with a spam attack today. This goes under the ‘bad timing’ award. Sorry, everyone.
Acting like guys too small for one division, but too big for another is the same thing as guys fighting at 135 because 125 didn’t exist in the UFC until earlier this year is something I don’t see any logic in.
There will likely be guys who come to fight in the UFC at 125 who, like Johnson did a couple years ago, admit that they’d be better off at a lower class if it existed. I just don’t see any difference in discussing the existence of the 125lb weight class in the UFC. It is great for the guys moving down, and when Benavidez wins the belt I’m sure he will be very proud to be champ. He may even defend it a few times successfully. Meanwhile, an above average fan who might recognize these guys will go “Hey, isn’t that the guy Dominick Cruz beat a couple times?” they just aren’t gonna be guys like Aldo or Penn where you look at him and think about what dream matches you can make with the guys in the weight class above him.
“they just aren’t gonna be guys like Aldo or Penn where you look at him and think about what dream matches you can make with the guys in the weight class above him.”
So is that the quality of a fighter now? Questioning what kind of “dream matches” you can make with him if he moves up?
“Meanwhile, an above average fan who might recognize these guys will go “Hey, isn’t that the guy Dominick Cruz beat a couple times?”
They might. But they also might very well finish that thought with “..a couple times? He looks dominant fighting against guys his own size.”
Yep, lost again.
Johnson vs Benevidez is a great fight. Having nine of the top ten flyweights under contract is very cool, especially when only fifteen guys are signed. That is an unprecedented level of competition in any mma org. I don’t just grudgingly acknowledge this this, I celebrate it!
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/headgames/
Competitive fight? Or maybe people seem to think that Dana has gotten into Jon Jones head and guilt could play a factor in the fight against Belfort. In all honesty, I dont think Jones needs his head on straight to beat this guy.
Glad to see this post. It looks like your readers are too.
Back to “fun” MMA coverage…though I’m not going to fault Zach for covering the CSAC stuff. He is the leading edge on a very important, if not terribly exciting, story in a growing industry. There’s something to be said for that.
I would say moreso just back to MMA coverage. The CSAC stuff just sounds like a disgruntled employee bitching about his job at this point.
Chavez Jr. pissed hot for marijuana?
I wonder if that will violate his probation (in addition to
fuckinghis fight career up a tiny bit for the next few months).Got a link for that? ESPN Boxing doesn’t have anything about it (yet)…
Actually, all I have is Ring Magazine tweeting it and even then they’re saying it’s a rumor from a “reliable source.”
https://twitter.com/ringmagazine
http://ringtv.craveonline.com/blog/174891-report-chavez-jr-tests-positive-for-marjuana
Arum confirmed it, so I guess it’s true. What a maroon…
I guess when Arum was all “Chavez didn’t train right” we know what he means now.
He should be gettin a long time ban if anything. Second time, 7 or 9 month ban the first time.
He is done for awhile. Better go find something else to do or box unsanctioned in Tijuana.
Those demon inactive marijuana metabolites are the scourge of combat sports.
What a calamity.
So…Nick Diaz vs. JCC Jr. – hybrid boxing match with mma gloves – no drug testing…battleship in international waters, coming to ppv?!?!
“a) Jon Jones/Dana White on-again, off-again back-and-forth over whether or not Jones ‘murdered the sport’ “
Jon Jones IS the sport!
dana white is an buddy of rich kids. dana white never had qualifications other then his enthusiasm, but not his enthusiasm is twitter. Its dana white who is murdering the sport.
“Plus, Sonnen potentially working a show where the UFC is reportedly running the drug testing …”
I almost forgot that chael is a notorious drug cheat. Great call dana white. Thats what the sport needs more of.
“c) Jones started out as a 13-to-1 favorite (91%) against Belfort but now has dropped to an 8-to-1 favorite”
Uh huh. Is that like wall street for gamblers? That has about as much to do with what happens in the cage as justin beiber.
Lol @ MMAsupremacy. That might be my new secondary MMA site.
BTW: This card stinks! Almost every active MMA fighter in the sport on ufc’s roster, as this is what they made!