You don’t want to be on Dana White’s bad side. Just ask Jon Jones.
The UFC president ripped Jones, his light heavyweight champion, and Jones’ coach Greg Jackson on a media conference call for not taking a fight on eight days notice against Chael Sonnen last month.
White has no trouble speaking his mind about referees, judges and his own fighters – that much his clear. But when you’re good to White, he’s great to you.
For almost the entire day Friday, instead of preparing for UFC on FX 5, White was on the phone with law enforcement officials from Minneapolis, Minn., and Des Moines, Iowa in an effort to bail Jeremy Stephens out of jail. Stephens was scheduled to face Yves Edwards on the Fuel TV prelims of the card Friday and White was determined to get Stephens to the Target Center in Minneapolis to compete.
After the event was offer, and White’s efforts failed, the UFC boss said he was willing to pay an “astronomical amount of money” to get Stephens out of custody. He was cool with officers taking him right back to jail after his fight. White was ready to bend over backwards for Stephens, a 26-year-old lightweight who has been in the UFC for five years.
None of it worked. Authorities from Des Moines, who had an outstanding assault warrant for Stephens for an incident that occurred in 2011, played hard ball. White was most upset, because he believes Stephens when the fighter says he’s innocent and that a father and husband is now out of a pay day.
Chances are, White will make it right and compensate Stephens financially somehow. It probably won’t get much press. Usually articles about White revolve around how foul-mouthed, stubborn and irration White can be.
Those stories aren’t wrong. White is all of those things sometimes. But he’s also exactly the kind of boss you want in your corner when the crap hits the fan.
As long as you’re on his good side.
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It was hard to get a good read on the main event, because it was clear that Travis Browne injured his leg very early on. That almost completely negated what makes the Hawaiian heavyweight good: striking power. To Antonio Silva’s credit, he pounced like a shark when he saw Browne was hurting, knocking him out in the first round with a wicked overhand right and ground and pound.
I’ll reserve judgment on Browne until I see him at full strength against someone Silva’s caliber. “Bigfoot” is a more than competent heavyweight, bordering on the top 10. There are very few men in the world who will outclass him, especially on the ground. This fight never even got to where Silva is at his best though. It was an odd outcome because of the freak injury.
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Jake Ellenberger did maybe three or four positive things in three rounds. If you can believe it, Jay Hieron did even less. No, there wasn’t much to talk about regarding this fight. Ellenberger got a nice takedown in the second round and mashed up Hieron’s face with elbows, probably breaking his nose and definitely opening up a few decent cuts.
Other than that, it was a very uneventful bout. Ellenberger won by unanimous decision, but was more conservative than we’ve ever seen him. Maybe that knockout loss to Martin Kampmann in his last fight made him somewhat gun shy. Still, I’m more worried about Hieron, who at 36 is looking at a last run at glory and couldn’t pull the trigger.
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John Dodson is like the Randy Moss of the UFC. Sometimes he takes rounds off. That’s what happened in the first and Jussier Formiga won it. Then Dodson turned it on in the second round, knocking Formiga out and doing his usual backflip, kicking off the cage celebration. Dodson will get flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson and he can’t afford to take any rounds off in that one. Johnson is one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world.
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Josh Neer proved why he’s never been more than a middle-of-the-pack welterweight in the UFC. Justin Edwards, a borderline prospect, finished him with a guillotine choke just 45 seconds into the fight. Give Neer credit for one thing, though: He’s entertaining to watch. The 29-year-old journeyman hasn’t been to a decision – win or lose – in his last 11 fights.
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The prelims were all about comebacks. Michael Johnson was pummeled in the first round only to come back to knock out Danny Castillo in the second. Mike Pierce knocked out Aaron Simpson with one punch in the second after losing the first round and Darren Uyenoyama also came back to beat Phil Harris by decision. All three of those guys — Johnson and Uyenoyama, especially — will win a lot more fights in the UFC.
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The best fight all night was Diego Nunes’ decision win over Bart Palaszewski. Both guys got rocked – Palaszewski in the first and second rounds and Nunes in the third. Palaszewski had Nunes in a world of trouble in that last round, but Nunes held on and looked really good in the first and second. Palaszewski is never in a bad fight and Nunes is still one of the best featherweights in the UFC.