Partial Credit to Dana Becker
– UFC president Dana White has returned with his pre-event video blogs. White takes us back to March’s UFC 171 event and offers plenty of behind-the-scenes footage. In the 10-minute blog, we see White tell Robbie Lawler that is Johny Hendricks’ fails to make weight for their welterweight title fight, he can still win the title. Hendricks eventually cut the necessary pounds to make 170 and went on to win the vacant title.
White also promises two more video blogs as we build to Saturday’s UFC 172 card that features light heavyweight champion Jon Jones defending his title against Glover Teixeira.
– Former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell recently sounded off on his displeasure of Chael Sonnen and Sonnen’s pre-fight hype skills. Liddell, who retired in 2010, continues to work for the UFC.
“Chael’s a nice guy. I’ve met him and hung out with him. I like him. I can’t stand the way he promotes fights,” said Liddell, in an interview with MMAjunkie.com. “I understand what he’s doing. He wasn’t the most exciting fighter, so he made himself exciting by promoting the fight really well and he got himself a couple of title shots for it. It works, but that whole crazy WWE-type stuff, that over-the-top stuff when you’re fighting a guy doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t like it.”
Sonnen, who also works for FOX Sports as an analyst, has fought twice for the UFC middleweight title and once for the light heavyweight belt. His shot at Jon Jones and the 205-pound title came despite not having fought in the division for several years. Sonnen called out Anderson Silva and his native home of Brazil countless times, and was recently involved in a brawl with Wanderlei Silva while filming The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 3.
“Some of the things he said, as far as I’m concerned, are over the line,” Liddell said. “Unless you’re known as an actor or being a WWE guy, you can get away with some of that stuff because everybody knows it’s fake.”
– Anderson Silva continues to progress finely towards a return to the Octagon, posting another video of himself working out via Instagram recently. “The Spider” suffered a broken leg in December in a loss to Chris Weidman.
While Silva’s rehab has been going well, he has started no desire to return to action in 2014. Instead, he is targeting his next fight for 2015.
