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Jon Jones injured, Phil Davis to replace him VS. Rashad Evans

9K views 88 replies 49 participants last post by  The Dark Knight 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
http://mmajunkie.com/news/23365/jon...-vs-rashad-evans-now-targeted-for-ufc-133.mma

With UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones (13-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) injured, UFC officials have now booked a bout between the champ's original opponent, Rashad Evans (15-1-1 MMA, 10-1-1 UFC), and replacement Phil Davis (9-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC).

Sources today confirmed with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) the new matchup, which takes place at UFC 133. The Canadian Press' Neil Davidson first reported the opponent switch, which was later officially announced by the UFC.

A source told MMAjunkie.com that Jones is facing a lengthy recovery from a torn right-hand ligament suffered in his title win. A timetable for his return wasn't immediately available.

Although not officially announced, UFC 133 is expected to take place Aug. 6 in Philadelphia. The main card is expected to air on pay-per-view.

The change of plans means another speed bump in Evans' request to reclaim the UFC's light-heavyweight title.

Evans had been in line to fight then-champ Mauricio "Shogun" Rua at UFC 128 before a knee injury forced Evans off the card. As Rua healed from his own knee injury, Evans sat out nearly a year waiting for the title shot rather than taking a non-championship bout and risking his shot at the belt. But when he lost the slot due to injury, UFC officials gave it to Jones following his early-February victory over fellow top prospect Ryan Bader at UFC 126.

Jones won the title from Rua in dominant fashion at UFC 128, which set up a meeting with Evans, a former training partner with whom he's now had a very public fallout.

But rather than Jones, Evans next will fight Davis, a former NCAA Division I national wrestling champion. Davis is 9-0 in his pro career, and the past five fights have come in the UFC. With victories over Brian Stann, Alexander Gustafsson, Rodney Wallace and Tim Boetsch, he began drawing comparisons to Jones. In this past month's UFC Fight Night 24 headliner, Davis scored one of his biggest wins yet: a hard-fought unanimous-decision victory over notable Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

For the latest on UFC 133, stay to tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.
Things just got more interesting.
 
#4 ·
Jon Jones injured, Phil Davis vs. Rashad Evans now targeted for UFC 133

What are your thoughts people?

With UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones (13-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) injured, UFC officials now are targeting a bout between the champ's original opponent, Rashad Evans (15-1-1 MMA, 10-1-1 UFC), and replacement Phil Davis (9-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC).

Sources today confirmed with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) the new matchup, which is expected to take place at UFC 133. The Canadian Press' Neil Davidson first reported the opponent switch.

A source told MMAjunkie.com that Jones is facing a lengthy recovery from a torn right-hand ligament suffered in his title win. A timetable for his return wasn't immediately available.

Jones' manager, Malki Kawa, declined to comment on the report.

Although not officially announced, UFC 133 is expected to take place Aug. 6 in Philadelphia. The main card is expected to air on pay-per-view.

The change of plans means another speed bump in Evans' request to reclaim the UFC's light-heavyweight title.

Evans had been in line to fight then-champ Mauricio "Shogun" Rua at UFC 128 before a knee injury forced Evans off the card. As Rua healed from his own knee injury, Evans sat out nearly a year waiting for the title shot rather than taking a non-championship bout and risking his shot at the belt. But when he lost the slot due to injury, UFC officials gave it to Jones following his early-February victory over fellow top prospect Ryan Bader at UFC 126.

Jones won the title from Rua in dominant fashion at UFC 128, which set up a meeting with Evans, a former training partner with whom he's now had a very public fallout.

But rather than Jones, Evans next will fight Davis, a former NCAA Division I national wrestling champion. Davis is 9-0 in his pro career, and the past five fights have come in the UFC. With victories over Brian Stann, Alexander Gustafsson, Rodney Wallace and Tim Boetsch, he began drawing comparisons to Jones. In this past month's UFC Fight Night 24 headliner, Davis scored one of his biggest wins yet: a hard-fought unanimous-decision victory over notable Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.
Source: http://mmajunkie.com/news/23365/jon...-vs-rashad-evans-now-targeted-for-ufc-133.mma

I'm thinking, Mr Wonderful may have a chance against Evans. Then Davis to dethrone Jones!
 
#68 ·
This exactly. Would've liked to see Davis take some time off to further evolve his game, but gotta give him props for taking this gigantic fight. Unfortunately I don't see him beating Rashad at all, I actually see Rashad TKOing him in the first couple of rounds.
 
#6 ·
Jon Jones injured, Phil Davis vs. Rashad Evans now targeted for UFC 133
by John Morgan and Dann Stupp on Apr 25, 2011 at 12:50 pm ET
With UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones (13-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) injured, UFC officials now are targeting a bout between the champ's original opponent, Rashad Evans (15-1-1 MMA, 10-1-1 UFC), and replacement Phil Davis (9-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC).

Sources today confirmed with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) the new matchup, which is expected to take place at UFC 133. The Canadian Press' Neil Davidson first reported the opponent switch.

A source told MMAjunkie.com that Jones is facing a lengthy recovery from a torn right-hand ligament suffered in his title win. A timetable for his return wasn't immediately available.

Jones' manager, Malki Kawa, declined to comment on the report.

Although not officially announced, UFC 133 is expected to take place Aug. 6 in Philadelphia. The main card is expected to air on pay-per-view.

The change of plans means another speed bump in Evans' request to reclaim the UFC's light-heavyweight title.

Evans had been in line to fight then-champ Mauricio "Shogun" Rua at UFC 128 before a knee injury forced Evans off the card. As Rua healed from his own knee injury, Evans sat out nearly a year waiting for the title shot rather than taking a non-championship bout and risking his shot at the belt. But when he lost the slot due to injury, UFC officials gave it to Jones following his early-February victory over fellow top prospect Ryan Bader at UFC 126.

Jones won the title from Rua in dominant fashion at UFC 128, which set up a meeting with Evans, a former training partner with whom he's now had a very public fallout.

But rather than Jones, Evans next will fight Davis, a former NCAA Division I national wrestling champion. Davis is 9-0 in his pro career, and the past five fights have come in the UFC. With victories over Brian Stann, Alexander Gustafsson, Rodney Wallace and Tim Boetsch, he began drawing comparisons to Jones. In this past month's UFC Fight Night 24 headliner, Davis scored one of his biggest wins yet: a hard-fought unanimous-decision victory over notable Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

For the latest on UFC 133, stay to tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

Holy**** I'll have to think about this...

I don't know who to cheer for:confused02:


Thanks for posting OP
 
#7 ·
Aww mannnnn, you're killing me! This is awful news to me! I was really looking forward to that fight. Plus, I think the Davis vs. Evans fight is a mismatch. Davis himself just stepped out to work on his game due to lack of experience/time in the sport and Rashad is a veteran and former LHW champion. I think Rashad will smoke Davis thus derailing his momentum and leaving us still hungry for the fight we originally wanted. Ahh well. Such is the sport of MMA. It gives and takes away.
 
#18 ·
Over half his wins are finishes, that's not a bad rate. But over half of those were against mediocre competition.

I'm not really sure if it's going to be a hugfest. Both guys are great wrestlers so there's a decent chance one of them can nullify the other's clinches and takedowns if they want to keep it a striking war.
 
#15 · (Edited by Moderator)
Jones Being injured sucks, and it seems like these two are two magnets pushing each other away... Sad :(

BTW dude, what have you done to the format of the text, this page is like 7,8 miles wide :S

Davis has a bright future no doubt, but this is like being weened off breatmilk and onto whiskey...

In the case he beats Rashad, awesome, but I really think that he needed some time off to develop and so on... We'll have to see, but I predict Evans winning here, sadly :/
 
#20 ·
Jones Being injured sucks, and it seems like these two are two magnets pushing each other away... Sad :(

BTW dude, what have you done to the format of the text, this page is like 7,8 miles wide :S
It's cause he used the code tag instead of quote- code tag was designed for displaying programming code where preserving lines in their entirety (rather than wrapping text down to the next line like quote or standard tag-less posts do) is very important.

I'm gonna change that as I merge this though, cause this nuts.

okay, so davis is replacing jones in the title fight? so winner of this fight gets an interim belt.. or is dana ******* rashad in the ass without so much as a courtesy spit?
Although I don't like interim titles, it would suck for Rashad, after taking so much time off to wait for Shogun, and then now losing his title shot for who knows how much longer.
 
#17 ·
No comments about Rashad putting it all on the line and not waiting for a title shot?

Personally, I think Dana hates Rashad and is praying that Davis is as good as I think he is and will knock Rashad off.

I also think it's a ballsy matchup that fans should be saying thank you for.

Bringin' along slowly is for boxing:thumbsup:
 
#23 ·
I wonder what Rashad thinks about the consequences to his "brand" will be after this fight.

Anyways I just had to air my bad opinion of Rashad again but that's where it ends for this fight. If Davis' last fight is any indication of where he stands in the LHW ladder then we're going to see Rashad knock him out. I'm saddened to see Davis take this fight as he seemed to have identified that he needed to do a lot of work and would be taking some time off from actual matchups.

I hate to be a conspiracy theory guy but I smell a lot of politics involved in the LHW picture.​
 
#25 ·
This stinks, and is all wrong for Davis, despite it being a 'great opportunity'.

Seriously, the UFC will have screwed this up big time, and Davis will no doubt feel he can't say no to such an offer, for fear of recrimination.

Couldn't we maybe have seen Evans/Griffin 2 or Rampage/Evans 2 instead, later this year ?

Also, if Jones injured his hand in the title win, why has it taken until now for all this to occur ?
 
#69 ·
Also, if Jones injured his hand in the title win, why has it taken until now for all this to occur ?
Well, he was actually suspended indefinitely for a hand injury after the fight.

Jon Jones: Suspended indefinitely pending X-ray, MRI and orthopedic clearance of right hand
According to Jones' manager the MRI was only done recently:

"Jon hurt his hand in the 'Shogun' Rua fight," Kawa today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "He hurt his hand really bad, but it's also something that's been bothering him for a long time – all the way back to his wrestling days in college. On his right hand, his thumb and forefinger and the area in between becomes very, very swollen. It gets to the point where he can't even make a fist.

"As the week after the fight with 'Shogun' went by, his hand started to feel a little bit better. The UFC immediately had the hand X-rayed because they thought it might be broken, and the results came back negative. He was told just to rest the hand, and it would probably get better. Unfortunately, the pain remained, and even shaking people's hands was starting to hurt him very badly. He told me how bad it was hurting, and I was in the middle of discussion with the UFC for the Rashad Evans fight, which was expected to take place in Philadelphia."

The UFC had targeted August's UFC 133 event as a host for the much-anticipated Jones-Evans matchup, but Kawa and the world's biggest mixed martial arts promotion wanted to be doubly sure.

"Jon was supposed to start training camp next week, but he admitted his hand was still really bothering him," Kawa said. "I explained to the UFC what was happening, and we were hoping we could push the fight back a little bit, maybe September or so, to let the hand heal through the month of May. This was about two or three weeks ago.

"The UFC suggested we get an MRI done because there must obviously be something wrong with the hand if it was still in pain. We got that done with one of the UFC's doctors, and we just got the results back last week, and he has a torn ligament."

Of course, for the 23-year-old title holder, that news wasn't enough. He wanted a second opinion, then a third opinion. Jones searched desperately for anyone that would give him some good news, but it just never came.

"Jon wanted to fight the fight with a torn ligament, but I was completely against it," Kawa said. "We called a bunch of doctors all across the country – people that he knew, people that I knew – and all the doctors confirmed the same thing: If he's got a torn ligament in his hand, then he needs surgery or it will not heal correctly. At 23 years old, Jon is talking about taking cortisone shots and trying to deal with it as best as he could without really repairing it.

"It's not like this fight is next month. If that was the case, maybe he could push through it. We're talking about a full training camp and then a very tough fight with Rashad Evans. I was against it. Doctors were against it. Every doctor we spoke to said the only thing that could happen is the injury could get worse. There's no way it was going to get better, so there was no upside to staying in this fight.

"It took a lot of convincing, but Jon finally realized he has to consider his long-term career – not just one fight right now."
It doesn't really apply here, though it was my initial thought when I heard about this. Plenty of surgeries are only done after a follow up test weeks after the initial injury for swelling to go down and to see if they're healing naturally from rehab.

So you get stuff like this from Cain Velasquez all the time:

"[The injury] happened in the Brock fight," Velasquez said. "After the fight, I felt fine. Later that night, my body starting cooling down, and my shoulder was jacked up. I knew something wasn't right. I saw the doctor and got an MRI, and he said I had a torn rotator cuff. They said, 'We'll try to do rehab first. We'll rehab it for six weeks and see how it's going.' I did that, and finally when the six weeks was up, we had another MRI. The muscle was still torn, so that said, 'We've got to have surgery. The rehab didn't help it.'

"We tried to do it without surgery so I could get back as quickly as possible, but that didn't work, so we'll do the other stuff. ... I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to get the rehab done and get healthy that way and go ahead with training. I thought I was doing a good thing."
Fighters are always upset when physical rehab doesn't work, because they feel like they wasted their time. But if a doctor were to schedule invasive surgery on an athlete without even trying rehab first (when rehab is legitimately possible) they'd be pretty irresponsible.
 
#31 ·
Seems no one likes this matchup, if enough people complain then Dana will scrap it.

It's horrible matchmaking. Why feed such a raw guy to Rashad, as a replacement for what would have been a big title fight? It makes little sense and is bad for Davis. He's obliged to accept but I bet he isn't particularly happy with this, he needs time before stepping in with the top guys.

Rashad wins this fight standing.
 
#32 ·
Can't believe this, WOW.



Wow.



I think Davis is a monster, people thinking Lil Nog is the best striker he's faced are insane. The guy dismantled Gustaffson and Brian Stann.


I can't believe this, this is crazy, I think this fight is actually going to be pretty great and they're lining up Davis vs. Jones pretty blatantly.
 
#33 ·
My reluctance to see this fight honestly stems only from his showing against Lil Nog. Maybe Nog fought the fight of his life and Davis was off, who knows. But he didn't impress as much as I hoped he would.

Credit his gameplanning for switching to the single in that 2nd round and being able to secure td's after that but he looked terrible in the 1st. Td's stuffed over and over and looked hesitant in the stand up aside from his kicks.

Was hoping for a more dominant performance but maybe he'll surprise everyone and dominate Rashad. Be lying if I said I wouldn't enjoy it:)

Either way, here's to it being a great fight:thumbsup:
 
#35 ·
I think Davis looked great in that fight honestly. Lil Nog looked amazing and crisp and had been training for wrestlers for the last three fights, so his TDD was spot on.


But Davis did some super-human take downs and take down attempts that I honestly couldn't believe Nog was able to stuff. I wish there was some gifs up of them.


And really with a guy like Lil Nog how else can you beat him? You're not likely to sub him and he was only KO'd once ages ago by Soko.
 
#34 ·
Damn this sucks. Not looking forward to this fight as much as the Jones fight. Hope Davis destroys Rashad, but I think Rashad can give him a few problems.
 
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