5 UFC fights that were hugely overhyped

#3 Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen – UFC 159

Chael Sonnen's trash talk meant his fight with Jon Jones became overhyped

One of the most hyped fights of 2013, Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen probably should never have been made in the first place. The origins were strange in themselves – essentially, Jones was set to fight Dan Henderson at UFC 151 with the Light-Heavyweight title on the line, but when Henderson went down with a knee injury, Sonnen offered to step in on around a week’s notice.

Jones flat out refused the late change and to Dana White’s chagrin, the whole card had to be cancelled. Jones went on to defend his title against Vitor Belfort a few weeks later, but his reputation was soiled – largely because of his refusal to fight Sonnen, a natural Middleweight who had no preparation time.

Due in no small part to Sonnen’s verbal abilities, the UFC quickly latched onto the angle that Jones was somehow afraid to fight ‘The American Gangster’, and promptly signed a fight between the two for early 2013. And naturally, they turned to their oldest trick – making the two men coaches of The Ultimate Fighter to build their feud.

The season was a pretty decent one and if nothing else, it enhanced Sonnen’s reputation as a potentially great coach. But despite providing a ton of hype, it couldn’t hide the truth – that the fight itself was a bit of a joke as it was likely to be one-sided in favour of Jones.

Sure enough, Jones smashed Sonnen in a simple fashion, taking him down with ease and ending the fight via TKO in the first round – despite suffering a gnarly broken toe in the process. But the hype had apparently done enough – the show sold 530,000 pay-per-view buys, becoming one of the more successful cards of 2013.

Still, the fans that ordered the show probably came away somewhat disappointed if they’d expected the war that the hype packages promised. This was a squash match masquerading as a piece of great matchmaking – verbal hype from Sonnen that didn’t pay off in the end.