Dana White Confused As To Why Jon Jones Was Even Sparring With Alistair Overeem

UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones has had quite a controversial time recently, and it all started with the UFC 178 media day brawl with Daniel Cormier. Then came the notorious ‘Hot Mic’ fiasco, followed by a crashing of the UFC 178 hype train, as Jones was injured and forced out of the fight with “DC”.

UFC president Dana White had previously accepted responsibility for the media day brawl, but he has not been so holistic about the injury that forced “Bones” to fall out of UFC 178. Check out what White said while speaking to Jim Rome:

“It drives me crazy, first of all he’s fighting a 5’ 10” unbelievable wrestler – that’s who he is facing in Daniel Cormier. [But] he’s training with 6’ 10” no-wrestling, all-standup kickboxer Alistair Overeem. And Alistair Overeem lands on his leg and busts his knee up and gives him a high ankle sprain. I mean I just don’t know why he would be training with Alistair Overeem for a fight when he’s going to fight a 5’ 10” wrestler. I don’t know, it’s frustrating. I wanted to pick the phone up about twenty times and call him and say ‘What are you doing? Why’s he training with Alistair Overeem to fight Daniel Cormier. Please tell me how that makes sense?’” said White. “But I didn’t. I bit my tongue, until right this second.”

It is true that Overeem is fairly different in style from Cormier, but he is a big guy. Maybe not 6 foot 10 as Dana says, he is actually 6 foot 4, but he is a strong heavyweight. Of course there was talk that Overeem was up to his old tricks again, and almost instantly a story emerged that “Reem” had injured Andrei Arlovski in training too.

It’s highly doubtful that Overeem is a secret agent, hired to methodically injure MMA stars, but could this have been avoided? Obviously with both guys at Jackson’s MMA, there is going to be times when they train with each other, but does Greg Jackson hold any responsibility here? Perhaps White is in over his head while trying to speculate on the famed gym’s training methods, what do you think?