wow, i dont look at the thread for a couple of days and all hell breaks loose....
Jones - what an arse, nothing more to say than what others have said
Dana - agree with both repo and drphil on this, its a combat sport with all the rough and readyness etc so a bit of straight talking is to be expected. That being said, if he wants the sport to be ran a lot more like a professional business then he needs to drop the "street tough" act and start being a bit more restrained. That or employ someone to run the business side of things so he can carry on with his gobbing off.....
Anderson Silva - if he made the offer to fight anyone else then bloody fair play, surely Dana wouldve been all over that though, can you imagine the PPV revenue...!!
Machida - why would he take the fight, he's not had the training camp and i dont blame him for not taking it.
thing is, i like Jones but the guy is heading the right way to be the most hated champ in UFC history if this keeps up....data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Exactly.
I think when the dust settles and everyone gets past their initial hatred of Jones, they will realise that Dana has been an ass.
Even if they couldn't get a replacement and just had to move the co-main up to main, the only thing that would suffer is the PPV numbers. The poor sods who had made flight and hotel bookings etc would prefer a weak event than none.
The fighters who are losing their payday would prefer it. This event could have continued but Dana is too busy trying to crucify Jones. This way the fans and fighters lose out instead of the UFC losing out by getting bad PPV numbers.
Ps, check out Chael's Twitter...
The one blessing here is that Dana might be reluctant to put all of his eggs in one basket in future. His strategy of putting on a weak card because the main event can carry it has backfired bigtime. Some cards in the past have been so stacked, that if the main event was pulled, it wouldn't be an issue. It's not Jones's fault that his fight is the only one people want to watch.
I don't think Jones should feel that he has to save an event for the sake of other fighters and the promoter. What surprises me though is even when you take that stuff out of the equation, it was still in Jone's interest to take this fight. Sonnen was an easy matchup for him, it would have made him a ton of money and he'd have looked good to fans and his new sponsor.
Instead, he's lost loads of fans, Dana hates him and he's now facing Belfort who is a way bigger threat to him. Belfort is obviously going to be an underdog but Belfort can knock any opponent out in the early part of a fight.
The problem is it's Vegas, which means higher ticket places, so a higher expectation of what a main event should be. Per Ariel's twitter, they didn't even consider Jones/Chael in Toronto because of their relationship with Mandalay Bay, so that shows the outside forces that need to apleased.
They're going to lose a ton of money over this, the idea that this wasn't a last case scenerio and they didn't look for workarounds rings hollow to me. I'm sure Dana hates Jones right now but enough to go out of pocket?
UFC 106 lost Lesnar vs Carwin. They didn't cancel the event they just bumped Tito vs Griffin II up to main event. That was also in Vegas. I know a few guys from the Fight Club who had tickets and they were furious. At the time they were the highest priced tickets in UFC history but the UFC knew that Tito and Forrest could still sell a reasonable number of PPVs so they went ahead.
This time the co main is a turd that wouldn't sell worth a damn so I think it's financially better for the UFC to kill the event than to run it and lose money on the PPV. They make the vast majority of their money there, not on tickets.
As above, I think they'd lose just as much or more if they paid all the overheads for an event, fighter wages etc and then have an event that would imo barely break 100k PPVs.
You'll hear no argument out of me that they shouldn't have had a backup plan in place or at least a stronger semi-main to take over. But they didn't and now they've lost millions, cost Las Vegas tens of millions and ****** off the cable companies and probably Fox. For this to happen, UFC must have seen running the show without a main event as unfeasible, it really couldn't have been as simple as just run the show without a real main event because they would have done it.
Wow not been on this thread for a day and all hell has broken loose data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7I'm gutted I'm not gonna see Jones get knocked the "h" out
Karateka Lyoto Machida has revealed today his reasons for declining a title fight against Jon Jones, who went opponentless after Dan Henderson suffered an injury which got him out of the UFC 151 Light Heavyweight title bout, previously scheduled for september 1st.
According to the Dragon, the four weeks timeframe would not be sufficient for his physical preparation. Last year, Machida was stopped by Jon Jones after taking a fight in similar circumstances. However, despite the refusal, Lyoto stated he still wishes to fight for the title.
"I want to serve the UFC and reclaim my belt. I always respect my opponents. For these reasons, I must prepare myself the way I believe is the more adequate", Lyoto said.
In a press release, Machida expresses his desire to face Jon Jones for the belt during UFC 153, which takes place october 13, in Rio de Janeiro. The UFC president, Dana White, told noth-american press Lyoto would have to face at least one more top contender before fighting for the title again.
After the series of events that culminated with the cancelation of UFC 151, carioca Vitor Belfort took spot as title challenger. The fight between Belfort and Jones is scheduled for the upcomiong september 22 card.
I also read that Shogun declined as well (sorry if it's already been mentioned)