Attention Regional Promotions: Please Take Note of UFC 151 Failures

UFC 151 will be considered, forever, the event that never happened.

After an injury to light heavyweight challenger Dan Henderson, UFC officials had only two weeks to find a replacement for champion Jon Jones for Sept. 1. None other than “The American Gangster” Chael Sonnen stepped up to the plate as a replacement for his friend Henderson, but at that point, things collapsed.

The young, sometimes controversial, champion Jones refused to fight Sonnen, thus leading UFC President Dana White to bash both Jones and his head trainer Greg Jackson. After many disagreements between the two sides, White made a mind-blowing decision to cancel the entire event, leaving the remaining fighters without work that weekend.

While it is very embarrassing for the Zuffa company, smaller promotions followed along with the breaking news. If these owners are smart, they won’t let this happen to them, ever.

Whenever an event is canceled, especially a big event such as UFC 151, it looks bad for both the company, as well as the entire sport of mixed martial arts. Casual fans that were planning on ordering the event were obviously disappointed and may think differently about the sport we love to watch.

Regional promotions, such as Titan Fighting Championships in the midwest or Xtreme Fighting Championships in the south, need to take note of the failures the UFC has suffered lately. But so far, these, as well as other promotions, are doing a solid job of finding guys who step in and compete at the last minute.

Just last month, XFC had an injury to both main-event fighters, but the promotion was able to find two guys that would go on to put on a solid fight in front of a mid-size crowd.

This is how promotions should approach things. There’s no way an event should be canceled just because a main event is scratched. The rest of the fighters put in all that training to make money for their families, but then find out the week before that the event is canceled. It’s beyond disappointing.

So all regional promotions out there, don’t mimic everything the UFC does. Never, and I mean ever, cancel an event due to one guy pulling out of a fight.