Jon Jones To Face Vitor Belfort At UFC 152

by Dr. Octagon, J.D.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails from Jon Jones fans arguing I’m being too hard on him and if he doesn’t want to fight, he shouldn’t have to. If this wasn’t a sport where most of the fighters work their asses off to salvage cards, and it was more typical for guys to refuse matchups and basically ruin cards, then maybe it would be more forgivable. Jon Jones himself got his start filling in for an injured fighter at UFC 86.

Shit just got surreal son. What we know is that Jon Jones refused to fight Chael Sonnen on short notice. Some people are blaming UFC boss Dana White, arguing he didn’t have to blow up the whole card. That’s fair, but if he didn’t cancel the event, everyone who paid for tickets would be getting ripped off. Part of that is because other than the main event, there wasn’t a lot of great fighters on the card, and part of it was that everyone was going to see Jon Jones fight.[[MORE]]

I had previously said that Jon Jones screwed over all the fighters who were on the undercard, and some of our readers pointed out that Dana was partially to blame for that one. That is true. If the UFC wasn’t spreading its talent so thinly with so many events, maybe the second fight on the card would have been Pay Per View-worthy. But Dana was also trying to salvage an event for a bunch of people who paid top dollar to see Jon Jones fight, and no matter what he did, Jones refused to take a fight against a much smaller man who was not training for a fight.

The economy is bad and these events are pretty expensive to put on and to go to. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for a guy who doesn’t recognize that. For a guy that recently turned to fighting so he could support his family, Jon Jones doesn’t want to put himself out for his fans who spent money on plane tickets, event tickets, and hotel rooms to cheer him on.

So why didn’t Jon Jones want to face Chael Sonnen? The main reason sees to be his trainer Greg Jackson told him not to. It’s a puzzling decision, as Chael was going to be way less prepared for the fight than Jones. If Jones remains the champion he is probably going to have to fight Chael at some point. Why not fight him while he is still a middleweight, rather than let him spend a year bulking up while having a 6:1 T/E Ratio?

Plus, Jones had previously complained that he didn’t want to fight Lyoto Machida because it wouldn’t generate enough PPV buys. If PPV buys are your concern, Chael is the man you want to fight.

Alexander Gustaffson is another name mentioned for a title shot and Dana hasn’t bothered to call him out yet. I’m thinking that Gustaffson is licking his chops at the thought of getting to fight Mauricio Rua, who has great name recognition, but has looked horribly out of shape recently, and had trouble finishing Brandon Vera.

So what was already puzzling just became more confounding as the UFC has announced that Lyoto Machida has refused to fight at 152, as he would prefer to fight Jones at UFC 153. For a guy that was saying he really wanted to get a title shot, this is a surprising turn of events. Dana gave Lyoto a pass when he refused to fight Jon on eight days’ notice, but I bet he’s pretty pissed about this one.

So Jon is now matched up against Vitor Belfort, a 35-year-old middleweight, at ridiculously long odds. Jon Jones is an absolutey massive light heavyweight and has a 10-inch reach advantage and a 4-inch height advantage, along with at least 20 pounds on Belfort, who probably just won’t cut any weight for the fight. Belfort is one of the few fighters that quotes the Bible more often than Jon Jones. He used to fight at heavyweight and light heavyweight before he got caught juicing.

I’m not sure if Jones refused to fight every other light heavyweight, or if every other light heavyweight refused to fight him, but I don’t know why they couldn’t have plugged in Sonnen, who is at least going to be a real light heavyweight at some point.

Personally, I think Jon Jones is ducking Sonnen. Sonnen has been trolling Jones hard since he lost to Anderson Silva and if the UFC wants to make money on a PPV, putting Sonnen is guaranteed to generate a ton of buys. The only reason I can think of for not making this fight is that Jones flat-out refused. Sonnen’s tough, no doubt, but I still can’t see why Jones is so hesitant to fight a guy who is so much smaller than him.

Update: Greg Jackson is reported as saying he had no idea they were going to cancel the event if Jones didn’t fight. He also said that Jones would fight anyone at UFC 152 on Jordan Breen’s show. Seems odd to me that 8 days of preparation isn’t enough, but 29 days is. I can’t believe that Jon Jones told them he would fight anyone and all they could get was Vitor Belfort.