For the first time in 11 years, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has been forced to cancel a pay-per-view (PPV) event, according to an irate UFC President Dana White on today's impromptu media conference call.
Blame Jon Jones.
Dan Henderson, who tore his MCL and had to bow out of the UFC 151 headliner scheduled for Sept. 1, 2012 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, was going to be replaced by friend and former teammate, Chael Sonnen, who accepted the fight on just eight days notice.
The only problem?
"Bones," on the advice of his head coach, Greg Jackson, refused to take the fight. So not only do we lose the "Jones vs. Henderson" main event, we get nothing. Nada. Zilch. Instead, Jones will move forward with his Lyoto Machida rematch, which has been booked for the promotion's upcoming PPV event on Sept. 22 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
That means Joseph Benavidez vs. Demetrious Johnson is no longer the headlining contest, but as White explains, it's still too early to make any kind of announcements as to how they'll merge the remaining UFC 151 fights into future cards.
Stay tuned.
Needless to say, the "Sin City" fight boss had less than kind words for the Greg Jackson camp and the reigning UFC light heavyweight kingpin, who will also have to face some backlash from mixed martial arts (MMA) fans after becoming the first titleholder in UFC history to turn down a championship fight.
And in Dana White's eyes, that makes Greg Jackson a "Sport Killer."
There's plenty of juicy quotes and real-time updates from today's (Aug. 23, 2012) media conference call, which you can sift through in our UFC 151 live blog by clicking here.
source: http://www.mmamania.com
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