Dana White says UFC 151 may have been saved had Dan Henderson told him of injury earlier

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

UFC President Dana White was extremely unhappy with UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones last month, unleashing a tirade against the 25-year-old Champion for refusing a fight with Chael Sonnen on eight day's notice. That decision in part led to the UFC canceling an event for the first time in the organization's history, and White ripped into Jones and his team during a conference call to announce that news.

Part of the reaction was due to the fact that the decision to cancel the card came down shortly before the call, but it was still a vicious stream of comments from White aimed directly at Jones and his camp.

In the weeks since Dan Henderson's injury came to light, and since Jones was given the blame for the event's cancellation, White has eased back a bit on Jones, and in his first interview since then, he's set to go in depth on the situation on Tuesday night's episode of UFC Tonight on Fuel TV.

A preview of the interview has been posted online, and a much more subdued White commented on one of the other major problems that led to the event's cancellation.

"I agree with that, you're right," White said to interviewer Ariel Helwani when he commented that Jones and his team didn't deserve to be held solely responsible for the cancellation. "There is some truth, too, to what was said after that [about] Dan Henderson. Dan Henderson knew two weeks before the fight. Two weeks before he told me he was injured, he knew. And had he given me that two weeks, like he should have, this fight might have happened."

Penick's Analysis: More context to the situation will be brought about with the full interview, but White in this clip has clearly backtracked a bit on his initial comments regarding Jones, and has now placed some of the blame on Henderson. This is something we've talked about already, but Henderson does share some of the blame for not mentioning anything to the UFC prior to when he did. Had there been a backup plan if he ultimately had to back out, the event would have still gone on, and regardless of his reasonings for keeping it to himself, he left the UFC - and Jones - in a nearly impossible spot by the time he had to pull out of the fight.

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_14292.shtml

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