Jon Jones och Daniel Cormier skulle ha mötts vid UFC 178, men en knäskada tvingade Jones att hoppa av titelmatchen. Inför mötet hamnade de båda kämparna i ett slagsmål med varandra, och nu menar Dana White att han kunde ha förhindrat det hela från att hända.
Detta hade Dana att säga, via ”Download”:
Dave Sholler doesn’t really have any experience out there between the guys. There’s times when you know something is going on and you’re ready and you jump in there and get that thing defused. That’s why I stand there. I don’t stand there because I want to be in fucking pictures, I’m there to make sure that kind of shit doesn’t happen. You got two guys, who are going to fight, and there is definitely a ton of mind warfare going on between [Cormier and Jones], no doubt about it.
As soon as Jones went up and their bodies touched, I would have separated them. Sometimes you’ll see me put a hand in, or sometimes you’ll see me do something else. I would have separated them. It was the head butt, Jones headbutted Cormier — that’s what upset [Daniel] and made him push him back. I would have got my arm in there before that contact was even made. I would have seen the contact coming and I would have stopped it. Then I would have been right in the middle. Would I have stopped that whole thing from going down, who the fuck knows? I wasn’t there.
When those guys get up there and you have the mentality of a fighter, and not everybody is the same. There are some guys who can go up there and can stare at each other and it’s all good, and then there are guys where there can be any little thing that can be off, or something that was said leading up to them being face to face, and anything can happen. These guys are fighters, man, they’re ready to go. And that’s what makes the weigh-ins so amazing and why I love it so much. Those staredowns, there’s nothing fucking like it.
The position that I get to stand in during those staredowns is the greatest position in all of fucking sports. Nothing like being there when two guys are cutting weight, they’re fighting the next day, they’re away from their families for eight fucking weeks, and they get to square off. At the end of the day, the two men or women in the staredown are fighters.
People can try to sugar coat it or try to spin any way that they want, that’s the reality. That’s who they are, that’s what they’re paid to do and that’s what you show up to watch. These guys, that’s who they are to the core. And when you get two guys like that and you don’t handle the situation the right way to defuse it, that’s what happens. The difference is that Sholler has never been in that position before.
I och med skadan kommer Jones istället att möta Cormier den 3 januari, då de går match vid UFC 182 i Las Vegas.
