Hey, it’s Monday! The weekend passed with very little by way of news, but that’s to be expected with a holiday. Now the week kicks off with some big news and preparation for Saturday’s huge UFC 129 event.
– The biggest news of the day was Jon Jones pulling out of the planned fight with Rashad Evans to have a longstanding issue with his hand addressed. Given that it doesn’t affect his grappling or striking and has been an issue for a long time, it’s difficult for me to not wish that he’d just waited until after the Evans fight to have it dealt with. But, we will still see Evans fight when he takes on replacement Phil Davis.
– Vitor Belfort was also hit with bad news as it turns out he has hepatitis A. He should heal up with plenty of time before his UFC 133 bout with Yoshihiro Akiyama though.
– Jonathan Snowden wondered if UFC 129 will truly do big business on pay-per-view. Personally, I still expect it to hit at least the 800,000 buy mark. I still don’t fully understand the UFC’s marketing of the main event between Georges St. Pierre and Jake Shields. I’ll get into that with an article tomorrow though. That’s called a “tease” in the business. What business?
– Mike Fagan posted his weekly “This Week in Quotes” feature. Some commenters posted their weekly “this is fighter bashing!” comments.
– Mark Bocek told Ben Henderson’s former opponents “you’re not doing it right” when it comes to throwing chokes on Bendo. Have I mentioned that I really like Bocek to win that fight?
– Matt Bishop continued to look back at the great moments from Randy Couture’s career, included this time is the upset of Tim Sylvia. Every mention of Tim Sylvia’s UFC career needs to address two points. 1) No, Tim Sylvia did not suck. He was very good. 2) No, this was not the fight where Tim crapped his pants.
– Kid Nate debuted a new feature the “At a Glance” fight preview with Vladimir Matyushenko vs Jason Brilz. It has a cool table with lots of categories for each fighter. It was so good I ignored it and he had to come back and add this bullet.