UFC 151 Canceled

As you've probably heard by now, UFC 151 has been canceled. This is the first time in the company's history that they've had to cancel an event after matches had been announced. Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones was set to  defend his title against Dan Henderson. Hendo, as he's known, injured his knee during training and had to pull out of the fight which was supposed to take place on September 1st.

What makes this story even more interesting is that Jones declined to fight Chael Sonnen as a replacement. UFC president Dana White said they called several people but Sonnen was the only fighter willing to take on Jones on such short notice. However, Jones said that 8 days isn't enough to prepare for a fight against Sonnen and declined. White is rather upset about this, and of course Sonnen has now started running his mouth about he'll be "the monster in little JJ's closet" from now on.

What everyone in this situation seems to be forgetting, except for Jones, is that the champion had nothing to gain by fighting Sonnen. This would be Sonnen's first fight ever as a light heavyweight and it would be a title shot. Jones wouldn't gain anything but a paycheck by putting his title and "undefeated" (he does have 1 loss, a DQ for an illegal elbow, so technically he lost, but he's never been beaten) record on the line against Sonnen. Not only that, but Sonnen is a completely different fighter than Hendo is. Jones is right, 8 days is nowhere near enough time to prepare.

I'm surprised they canceled the whole event though. There have been situations in the past where the UFC had to cancel certain fights, but the rest of the card still took place. My guess is that without another big name fight on the card, they were worried that PPV numbers would suffer greatly.

Jones is now scheduled to fight Lyoto Machida on September 22 at UFC 152 (which should probably be named UFC 151 now, right?) in what will most likely be a snore-fest. Machida will probably dance just out of Jones' reach the entire fight, and considering how big that reach is, I fully expect the crowd to rain down boos during the entire fight. Granted this will be a rematch, Jones choked out Machida at UFC 140 in December last year, so maybe that will motivate Machida do something, but I doubt it. It's just not his style.

UPDATE-Jones will now be facing UFC legend Vitor Belfort at UFC 152. Machida turned the fight down saying that he didn't have enough time to train. Also, it has come out that Anderson Silva called Dana White and said he'd jump in and fight Jones in order to save UFC 151. However the call was made too late. Surprising to hear that Silva would offer his services though.

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