ESPN Mixed Martial Arts

NEWARK, N.J. -- In a night of strange happenings, perhaps the strangest was saved for last.

As most thought he would, Jon Jones (18-1) defended his light heavyweight title against Chael Sonnen at UFC 159 at Newark's Prudential Center, yet he did it in a prideful way -- by outwrestling the wrestler. Coming into the fight, the one bit of intrigue for the heavy favorite Jones was how he would respond to Sonnen’s constant pressure.

Instead, the 25-year old Jones took Sonnen down in the first 10 seconds of the fight, and repeated the process a couple more times before finishing him via TKO with 27 seconds left.

It was a dominant performance by the champion, who tied Tito Ortiz’s record for most 205-pound title defenses at five.

Then the revelation: In his post-fight interview with UFC commentator Joe Rogan, Jones made a gruesome discovery -- his toe appeared broken.

Jones’ left foot was shown on the arean's Jumbotron and it dawned on him and the crowd at the same time that he had a mangled toe. It seemed that Jones broke the toe while pushing off the mat on a takedown attempt.

“I felt it pop,” he told ESPN.com afterward. “But I didn’t let it slow me down.”

Just how long he’ll be out, and what this means for the 205-pound division, remains to be seen. Coming into the fight, UFC president Dana White had mentioned that heavyweight contender Daniel Cormier might be a possibility for an automatic title shot in the lower weight class. And then there was Lyoto Machida, who was in attendance on Saturday night. Machida has also been pinky sworn by White to get a rematch against Jones. But with the injury, everything goes back up in the air.

And as far as Jones is concerned, Cormier isn’t on his mind yet.

“I don’t want to give Daniel Cormier any hype right now,” he said during a postfight interview with MMA Live. “That guy ... I won’t even make a comment.”

As for Sonnen, who coached opposite Jones on "The Ultimate Fighter" and took a lot of flak for not having the credentials to get the shot to begin with, he was gracious in defeat.

“He’s an excellent fighter, I have no problem with the stoppage,” he said. “[Jones] is very powerful. When he went for the kill, he never stopped. I thought I was all right, but he is the better fighter.”

Sonnen intimated that he may contemplate retiring now that it appeared that he had his last shot at winning a title. But he wasn’t definitive on that. Coming in, the thought was that Sonnen’s only chance against Jones was to use his wrestling to put Jones on his back, like he did with middleweight champion Anderson Silva at UFC 117.

Instead, Jones turned the tables out of defiance.

“[Coach] Greg Jackson, he always teaches me to have a philosophy of ‘screw them,’” Jones said. “If people want to say you can’t do something, you say, ‘screw them.’ That’s the way I looked at the critics. Screw you guys.

“My wrestling coach told me that that they’re going to be watching, they want to see who’s the better wrestler, and everyone thinks that you can’t wrestle. I said, screw them. Let me show you guys I can wrestle. I take wrestling very seriously.”

On a night where two bouts ended in technical decisions for accidental eye-pokes, and another ended when Yancy Medeiros dislocated his thumb against Rustam Khabilov, Jones’ injury felt par for the course. It was yet another “what if” for Sonnen. Though the Jones fight was the polar opposite of Sonnen’s first fight with Anderson Silva, he once again came close to becoming the champion.

Had Sonnen survived the first round, it’s possible that Jones wouldn’t have been able to continue with the injury to his foot. In that case, Sonnen would have backed his way into a title. That would have been different from the Silva fight -- which he dominated for 4½ rounds before getting caught in a triangle/armbar with under two minutes left -- even if the nearness to the gold was the same.

For as close as that might have seemed, it was a million miles away. Jones was his usual dominant self, and he showed he can beat opponents at their own game. UFC 159’s main event was never in doubt. The only thing that is in doubt becomes what exactly happens next.

“We’ll see what happens with Jones’ [injury], and we’ll go from there,” Dana White said. But, before letting it go at that, he also dropped a bomb in the post-fight news conference. He said that Anderson Silva called -- and was asking for a fight. Was he calling out Jon Jones?

White left it for everyone to speculate, but added that it doesn't really matter right now, with Silva slated to fight Chris Weidman at UFC 162.

How’s that for timing?

UFC 151 will never happen. It disappeared from the UFC’s timeline, much like the 13th floor in many elevators.

How did we get here? It all happened in the fog of rumor, very fast and very stealthily.

It began when the main event’s challenger, Dan Henderson, partially tore his MCL in training at Team Quest this past week, and had to back out of his fight with Jon Jones. That left the UFC scrambling (once again) to fill a big spot on very short notice, this time for a main event just nine days removed from touching gloves.

Of course, a quiet disaster ensued behind the scenes, which in 2012 feels like a recurring nightmare for UFC matchmaker Joe Silva. The UFC first asked No. 1 contender Lyoto Machida to step in, but he declined. Dana White said he could hardly blame Machida given the circumstances.

But then the UFC asked the barely recovered middleweight Chael Sonnen, the most marketable Plan B ever invented, if he’d do it. This was a last-ditch effort. Sonnen not only agreed, he was online booking his flight to Vegas before Jones could even respond.

Then Jones responded. And his response was an unexpected, particularly divisive “no.”

Down went UFC 151.

The UFC hosted a media call to explain the ramifications of that “no” today, a moment White referred to as one of his “all-time lows as the UFC president.” The long and short: There won’t be a UFC 151. The louder, overarching gist was more accusatory: Jones and his trainer Greg Jackson (who advised him) just squandered millions of dollars for the company and left a million people in the lurch. Fans, fighters, media and the promotion alike. Even Joe Rogan had his comedy show canceled at the Mandalay Bay. It was a complete and careless domino effect.

And it meant that UFC 151 disappeared from the Las Vegas Strip as if it were all an epic David Copperfield trick.

Abracadabra. Gone. Kaput.

But for as much as Jones and Jackson are getting blasted for being so inconsiderate, there’s room to spread some blame here. Begin with the fact that Jay Hieron -- filling in for an injured Josh Koscheck -- was in the rickety co-main against Jake Ellenberger. A fight like that never stood a chance as a makeshift headliner in a worst-case scenario of a pay-per-view. There was no way the main event could be extracted this late without the whole house of cards falling down.

So it fell.

And this plays into the new and popular criticism that the UFC has been playing fast and loose with words like “event.” The depth of 2012 pay-per-view cards is far different from PPV cards of yesteryear. A big part of that is injuries. Koscheck-Ellenberger might have been able to stand on its own, but Hieron-Ellenberger could not. In short, more and more cards are vulnerable, and part of that has to do with the sheer volume of events.

UFC 147 should never have been a pay-per-view. Had Rich Franklin not been the “company man” one more time, that one might not have been salvaged either. In retrospect, many wished UFC 149 had been scrapped, after they spent $50 to discover their own disappointment.

Sonnen was willing to step up in a pinch because he had nothing to lose in a spot like that. Jones was advised it’d be foolish to accept the fight, and for reasons that make perfect sense -- to the individual, that is. To everybody outside of the individual, it felt like the rug was pulled out on something good. Sonnen-Jones had the potential to be bigger than Henderson-Jones, and a week was the perfect amount of time to suffer another Sonnen buildup.

As for the magnitude of the bout? If Jones didn’t like the idea of a Machida rematch based on poor PPV numbers, he’d have loved the business end of a Sonnen fight. Apparently that logic didn’t stack up next to basic preparedness. Jones’ penance is that he’s being redirected to Toronto (again) to fight Machida (again) on Sept. 22, in a playback bout not too many people were clamoring for. Is it his penance, or ours?

Either way, it’s the way the quiet disaster played out behind the scenes.

And for the first time in Zuffa history, a scheduled card had to be scrapped -- unless you count the original UFC 145 in Montreal that was supposed to go down in March. That one was nixed when Henderson turned down a fight with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, preferring to wait on his title shot with Jones. That one was still in the planning stages; this one was nine days away. Henderson played a hand in both cancellations (one by choice, the other by injury).

Jones played a hand, too. Only his hand had the power to shut down Labor Day weekend.

It all becomes the fallout of UFC 151, which no longer exists.

Quinton Jackson has revealed he would rather not talk to co-commentator and interviewer Joe Rogan after his UFC 144 fight with Ryan Bader, because he knows Rogan will have attacked him moments earlier on commentary. More »

Mark Munoz is as polite as he is vicious.

These aren't necessarily competing ideas, though the implied contradiction doesn’t need to be pointed out. However he manages to do it, Munoz pulls off both character traits exceedingly well.

As proof: Saturday evening in Birmingham, England. Munoz was nothing less than vicious while executing a plan of attack that allowed him to simultaneously damage and control Chris Leben. In other words, Munoz put Leben on the canvas and ground-and-pounded one of the UFC's most established veterans into a vision-impaired bloody mess.

We know through nearly two decades of popularized mixed martial arts that there isn’t a style more connected to winning than pinning an opponent to the canvas and unleashing every fistic tool available. Ground-and-pound is the most basic, effective and common route to exerting your will onto another person. The mere coinage of the term is testament to that.

Munoz only stood in front of Leben as was required. He wasn't scared to trade punches, but it was clear from the outset that it wasn't his intention. And when you're as dominant on the floor as Munoz tends to be, why would you approach a fight any other way?

Between the second and third rounds, after Leben dealt with being repeatedly smashed in the face, he expressed the fact that he could no longer see. The fight was over. Such endeth the viciousness. It was time for Munoz -- the polite.

Speaking in a cage red with the blood of a man he just mauled, Munoz wondered aloud to UFC color commentator Joe Rogan if middleweight champion Anderson Silva might be so inclined to grant him an opportunity to fight for the title.

That's paraphrased, but you get the sentiment. He was very sweet about it, and not in any contrived sense of the word. Nope, this was Munoz being Munoz.

Chael Sonnen might have bellowed into a microphone in an attempt to defame and embarrass the best fighter of his generation. Munoz, alternately, acted as if he might not be worthy of the opportunity, but he sought it nonetheless. No matter what happens with the rest of his career, that humility will serve him well as he continues on in this world.

On the merits, you can argue whether or not Munoz "deserves" the title shot. But let's say Silva agrees, the UFC signs off, and sometime in 2012 the "Filipino Wrecking Machine" is set to fight a man he deeply respects -- a former training partner, or, more accurately, a training mentor.

So what kind of shot does Munoz have?

Well, we saw what Sonnen did to Silva. Munoz, too, is an excellent wrestler. As previously mentioned, he knows what to do when opponents are grounded. It makes sense that Munoz could put Silva on his back and unleash enough venom to hurt the champion. Munoz, like Sonnen, is a high-output fighter. He won't tire easily. His aggressive, physical method on the floor also helps him avoid submissions. Munoz maintains posture very well.

All those things could come into play and help him upend the UFC middleweight champion. Of course, no one matches "The Spider" when it comes to stand-up striking. The champion exists in a world of his own, but Munoz can take comfort in knowing he's excelled at range and control. And if he can close distance and turn it into a brawl, hey, why not?

Munoz is plain likable and that's an important factor, too.

Silva is better when he's angry. It motivates him. Considering what we know about Munoz, he wouldn't play the part of a flamethrower like Sonnen has. He doesn't need to, nor does he want to. Yet when it's time to work, Munoz is no less prepared to smash and maim.

Vicious and polite. Now that's a tough combination to beat.