Anderson Silva: I’ll Be Rooting for Vitor Belfort Against Jon Jones at UFC 152

Quotes from Anderson Silva on Jones vs Belfort:

“It’s difficult, because Jon Jones has a larger-than-normal wingspan and he’s still very young, He’s still in the phase where he’s playing during the fight, really, but he doesn’t have the responsibility of a champion.  He fights with delight, jokingly, striking like I did back in 1930, when I started, Vitor has a great chance to defeat him. The biggest factor for Vitor is to use his explosiveness and his jiu-jitsu, where he is very good. But I think when one of them makes a mistake, the other will end up striking.”

“As a Brazilian, I’ll be rooting for the Brazilian, even though I have a very good friendship with Jon Jones, Whenever I’m with him, I ask him to conduct his career in a different way, because he is very young and is always asking me something. But I’ll be rooting for Brazil, yes. May the best man win, but I’m rooting for Brazil.”

“We’re in different weight classes and there are teammates from Team Nogueira who may face him, we have a code of conduct in our team, and I respect that a lot.”

I wonder if any of this will be enough to make Jon Jones want to fight Anderson now?  Or if Machida loses to Jones again if Anderson would fight him?  It’s a fight people want to see and there is nothing for Anderson at 185lbs anyway.

UFC 151 Canceled

UFC 151 has been canceled. Pretty crazy news considering the UFC has never canceled a show before and then just completely skipped that numbered event altogether.  Zuffa has said this will be a "lost show" and they will move on to UFC 152 next time (probably because they would have to change all the commercials and posters for several events).  They tried to save the event by giving Jon Jones a fight against Chael Sonnen but Jones turned it down.  He later accepted a fight against Vitor Belfort on a different card.

Dana White blamed the cancellation on Jones and Jones' coach, Greg Jackson, who advised him that accepting the fight with Sonnen would be the "biggest mistake of [his] entire career."  The biggest problem with the canceled event, and one Sonnen called Jones out on, was that now all of the other fighters on that card trained for nothing.  All of their fights will have to be rescheduled and they will miss out on their paycheck the lower level guys need to survive.  I think Jones should have stepped up and fought Sonnen to save the card.