by Dave Walsh
When I was growing up I was in a precarious position with my friends as I was a huge Guns N’ Roses fan, but was still really into Metallica. My friends, on the other hand, were huge Metallica fans and were very much anti-Axl Rose people. This made things difficult, at times, because of the falling out both bands had after the whole James Hetfield catching on fire incident and Metallica having a documentary filmed about them at the same time, which was released right after called “A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.” The drama heightened when Axl Rose lost his temper and left the stage early, which led to a riot.
When Metallica was given their own Behind the Music things only got worse with the incident as the band basically ripped them apart for not playing a three hour set that evening. I had to hear these interviews with Metallica paraphrased for years after that and boy was it obnoxious. I imagine that has to be sort of what it’s like to be a Jon Jones fan, because man, Jon Jones seems to be a hard guy to be a fan of and support sometimes.
This weekend at UFC 165 Jones and Alexander Gustafsson put on an amazing fight, where Jones just barely eked out the decision victory over Gustafsson, which has led to fans and Dana White calling for an immediate rematch. Things all seemed set for that fight to go down and then, well, Jon Jones happened. Jon Jones doesn’t want to fight Alexander Gustafsson in February, he wants to fight Glover Teixeira. The reasoning is paper thin, something about “his legacy” and a title defense record. What is clear is that he probably just cost the UFC a lot of money by not agreeing to the immediate rematch.
He was so close to making fans as well, huh?