...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones has been receiving the brunt of criticism for the cancellation of UFC 151 after refusing a last minute fight with Chael Sonnen, but he wouldn't have been in that spot to begin with had Henderson's camp alerted the UFC of his injury sooner.
In an interview with Fighter's Only, one of Henderson's coaches, Daniel Woirin, revealed that his knee injury was sustained three weeks ago, but he didn't pull out of the fight until earlier this week.
"Dan Henderson got hurt three weeks ago during sparring when he went to defend a takedown and for a while he has to be away from training, for two to three weeks," Woirin said. It was very difficult for him to refuse the fight. All the team had to convince him not to do it."
"We did a final sparring yesterday to evaluate his condition and he really didn't have the chance to fight with Jones. It is so depressing for everybody. Many things are involved in a high-level fight like this one, but unfortunately, this happened."
Penick's Analysis: If Henderson's camp had let the UFC know there was a potential issue when the injury happened, they could have gone to Jones three weeks ago to ask him about facing a replacement if Henderson couldn't fight. Based on his reasoning that it was a timing, not an opponent, issue, Jones would have been able to prepare for a replacement and UFC 151 would still be on. But nope, it's all Jon Jones' fault, right?
[Dan Henderson art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.