UFC
Dana White has no regrets on UFC 151, asks "What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?"
Sep 5, 2012 - 2:00:20 PM Dana White has no regrets on UFC 151, asks "What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?"

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

UFC President Dana White discussed the UFC 151 cancellation on Tuesday for the first time since his conference call tirade against Jon Jones two weeks ago. Speaking with Ariel Helwani on Fuel TV's UFC Tonight program, White talked about the emotional nature of that call and just why he felt the way he did.

"I had my moment where I was upset," White said (transcribed by Zach Arnold at FightOpinion.com). "Again, one of the things that I like to do is I like consistency, I loved that we never canceled an event, and there were times where people felt, 'should you have made that certain event a PPV?' But the show always goes on. People don't realize, you know, the collateral damage that goes down, how many people are depending on these events to happen. Not just the fighters and not just the UFC but so many other people that either work for or are invested in this in some way. And, it's the first time that we've ever had to do it. So, yeah, I was a little emotional about it."

Still, while an emotional response was involved, White's never one to look back on his actions, and he expressed no regret over his approach to Jon Jones and Greg Jackson in response to them turning down a fight with Chael Sonnen on eight day's notice.

"Nope," White responded when asked if he had any regrets. "I don't want to speak for the UFC. I'll say no on my end, no. I have no regrets whatsoever... [Would I take anything back?] Nothing, no. What exactly did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible?"

At that point Helwani brought up Dan Henderson's part in the proceedings, withholding news of his injury to the last minute. That was seen in the preview clip posted early Tuesday, but White continued beyond his criticisms of Henderson and swung back to Jones.

"[Henderson's] definitely to blame, too, but there's never been a case ever in UFC history where a guy didn't step up and take the fight," White said.

However, while he's not taking anything back from that now infamous rant against Jones and Jackson, he says he's not holding any animosity towards Jones, and sees this as a young man making a young man's mistake. He thinks they'll be able to move on from here, but that's something time will decide.

"Jon and I haven't talked since the incident," White said. "Do I hate Jon Jones or have any animosity toward him right now? I don't. If I did, I'd tell you, I think you know that. But it's just one of these things. We'll find out, as we move along in our relationship, we'll find out where we're at.

"Obviously this thing that just went down is... a little weird. It's never happened before but, I mean, Jon Jones is... all my other interactions with Jon Jones have been good. He's a young guy. He's a young guy. Has he made some bad choices and some bad decisions? Yeah. Who doesn't when they're his age? Seriously. Imagine being, if I went back again in my life and I was 23 years old, a ton of fame, a ton of money and everything else... that's when you make all your mistakes. The great thing about making all of your mistakes in your 20s is that when you're really start(ing) to establish yourself in your late 20s and early 30s, you've already done all the stupid stuff and, you know, you can conduct yourself in the way that you should.”

Penick's Analysis: White asks "what did I say about Jon Jones that was so horrible," and it was less in the statements themselves, and more with the vitriol and detrimental intonation of them that people found problems with. The statements that settled worst were saying Jones and Jackson murdered the UFC 151 event, or in saying he and Lorenzo Fertitta were disgusted with Jones making a decision for himself. But beyond that, it was the general way he characterized the situation that didn't serve anyone well; and that's not to mention the refusal to place any of the responsibility, still, on the UFC for putting together a fight card they didn't deem fit for pay-per-view, then making the ultimate decision to cancel the event. There was a way to handle this without demonizing their Champion and a potentially major box-office star, which could potentially hurt his draw and thus the UFC's business. Had he come on that conference call two weeks ago and said something along the lines of, "Unfortunately, Dan Henderson is hurt, and we were unable to put together a suitable replacement fight for the Light Heavyweight Championship, so we've made a tough decision to cancel next week's UFC 151 event. Jon Jones will now fight [insert here] at UFC 152, and the rest of the fighters on that card will be rescheduled for future events." Instead, he responded in an overly-emotional nature, and hurt himself, Jon Jones, and the UFC, and there should be some awareness of that. Unfortunately, that's not what we got from this interview.