On August 23, Dana White announced UFC 151 set for September 1st at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada was cancelled. The main event was a fight between light heavyweight champion Jon Jones and Dan Henderson. Unfortunately Henderson tore the medial collateral ligament in his right knee during training and had to withdraw from the fight.

White announced during a press conference that UFC 151 would be the first event in the company’s history to be cancelled. He blamed Jones for the cancellation after Jones declined to fight Chael Sonnen who agreed to fill in on eight days notice. Jones was taking his coach, Greg Jackson’s advice. Jackson told him that taking this fight on eight days notice would be the greatest mistake of his life. During the conference White announced that Jones would be fighting Lyoto Machida again at UFC 152, September 22. Machida declined however and Jones is set to fight Vitor Belfort at 152 instead.

This situation has caused a lot of controversy in the mixed martial arts community. Many say Jones is a coward for not taking the fight with Sonnen. They feel a champion should be ready to fight anyone at anytime. Many fans who bought tickets to the show, scheduled flights and reserved hotel rooms in Vegas for the event are upset. The fighters that were scheduled to fight in the under card of 151 are upset about not getting paid. Many were affected by the cancellation of the event. And many blame Jones, calling him a self entitled brat.

I’m in the other camp that defends Jones’ decision not to accept the fight on eight days notice. I feel Jones’ next fight is more important to him than anyone else and he needs to make smart decisions. It’s his career and life. Sonnen is a different fighter than Henderson. Jones, like most fighters train for specific opponents each fight. They devise ways to counter their challenger’s fighting style.

In an interview with MMA Weekly, Greg Jackson argued, “It was actually three days notice, it’s not eight days notice because you don’t train the last week of a fight camp. That’s when you do media and weight cutting. There’s no real training going on there.”

I agree with Jackson on there not being an adequate amount of time to train for a different opponent at such a high level of competition.

There are also rumors that Sonnen had a heads up about the possibility of fighting Jones three weeks before the news broke and had been training for it.I would put my money on Jones over Sonnen any day, but I respect his decision to be smart about his career choices and not jump into anything haphazardly and motivated by pride. This isn’t a bar room brawl, it’s something to be taken seriously. Battle in the octagon is a science.

I, like many others feel if anyone is to blame it’s the people that put the fight card together. The rest of the fights were lackluster, not anyone people really wanted to see and that’s why the whole event bottomed out when the main bout was gone. People simply wouldn’t want to pay for it.

Putting all this responsibility on Jones’ head doesn’t make any sense and is unfair. Unless perhaps he’s made CEO. Why should he take all the risk? I feel the whole situation was handled poorly. I feel bashing one of your top fighters in the public eye is bad for business.