Just weeks before UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones' first title defense and Quinton Jackson's first opportunity to reclaim his lost title, a behind-the-scenes drama has spilled into the public.
Jackson has accused Jones' camp of infiltrating a private, Denver-area facility where he's sequestered himself in preparation for their headlining fight at UFC 135. He said he's proven there's a spy in his midst.
Jackson (32-8 MMA, 7-2 UFC) and manager Anthony McGann believe Jones (13-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) is scared to fight and looking for a way out.
Jones' manager, Malki Kawa, denies he's used any underhanded tactics in the buildup to the Sept. 24 pay-per-view event and counters that Jackson is using spying allegations to excuse an imminent loss.
Whatever the case may be, the allegations have added a bizarre twist to the buildup of UFC 135, which takes place at Denver's Pepsi Center.
Dubbed "Spygate" by a report Monday on Yahoo! Sports, the drama unfolded this past past week when Jackson's manager got a call from UFC matchmaker Joe Silva, who was in Rio de Janeiro for UFC 134, asking whether the former champ had injured his hand in training. The original source of the inquiry? Kawa.
The injury, Jackson and McGann said, was fake – a ruse designed to ferret out a leak in his camp. Silva's call, they said, came almost immediately after they circulated the information to the suspected spy, and the wording they used to describe the injury was identical to the UFC matchmaker's words. (A separate hand injury Jackson complained about following his unanimous-decision victory over Matt Hamill at UFC 130 was merely a sprain, McGann said.)
Weeks prior, Jackson said Kawa had bragged to a trusted associate that he knew the inner-workings of the camp.
"As soon as I got enough proof in my head that there was somebody in my camp talking, I faked the injury, and what happened was what I was hoping would happen," Jackson told MMAjunkie.com on Monday. "The dumb person would say something, and we'd find out. And sure enough, four hours later, [Malki] called Joe Silva, and Joe Silva rang my manager."
Before that, Jackson said he wasn't sure whether it was a spy or the crosstalk common among elite-level fighters, training partners and production crews associated with the UFC. He suspected that someone may have told Rashad Evans of a bad knee injury he sustained in preparation for their fight at UFC 114, where Evans repeatedly targeted the afflicted knee during the fight. Evans told Yahoo! Sports he simply did it because he noticed it caused Jackson discomfort.
Jackson disagreed.
"I know why he was punching me in the knee – because my knee was injured," he said. "It wasn't a coincidence."
When his spying allegations went public, Kawa denied anyone from Jones' camp had been spying and said the call to Silva came after a friend told him Jackson had Tweeted about an injured hand.
Jackson @Rampage4realchuckles at that suggestion that Twitter is the source of the information.
"Maybe he meant to say 'text' and not 'Tweet,'" he said. "Do me a favor. Have anybody out there who's on Twitter (go and) search Twitter to see if they can find anything on Twitter with my name on it ... and see if there's any Tweets about me having a hand injury, that I'm out for this upcoming fight because we searched it, and we found nothing.
"Come on. Think about it. If that was on Twitter, that would have been big news. Me pulling out of the fight with Jon Jones? That would have been big news already. So you can just tell that he's lying, he's full of [expletive], and he's dumb."
Kawa today told MMAjunkie.com he didn't want to feed into what he called a "non-story," though he insisted that he heard about Jackson's alleged hand injury through a friend and said the accusations are a smokescreen for problems within his camp.
"I promise to God, I have no spy in that camp," Kawa told Yahoo! Sports. "It's completely and totally untrue. There is nothing to it at all. It’s funny he said that, though, because we've heard he has had old training partners of Jon coming in to work with him.
"We don't care, and it's kind of hilarious he's doing this. But I can guarantee you there is nothing at all that is true about this other than that I called Joe Silva after someone put out a thing on Twitter that 'Rampage' was injured and pulling out. I wanted to know what was up, but it was no more than that."
But Jackson pondered where Kawa had heard about his training partners if there wasn't a spy in the picture. He declined to comment on what actions his camp had taken since the call from Silva, though McGann said training partners from the camp recently have been let go.
"All I will say is that where has the honor gone in fighting?" Jackson asked. "Where has it gone? Where has the respect for battle gone? To me, this shows fear. I don't think the UFC should be involved because I don't really care. I'm just think the fans should know what's going on. I keep it real. I don't pull [expletive] back.
"I just think it shows character. I don't know if Jon Jones has anything to do with it. Who cares. I didn't say Jon Jones called Joe Silva. His manager called. It just makes his client look bad. What your manager does reflects on you as a fighter. I've had managers that have done some stupid [expletive], and it's reflected on me. (They) asked for weird stuff that I didn't ask for. Sometimes, you can't control what your manager does, but it does reflect on you."
Nevertheless, Jackson said the incident has motivated him to train harder for the fight.
"I'm OK with them having a spy in camp," he said. "I'm picturing the spy telling them all the good stuff too, about how hard I'm training and how good I'm looking. Because he should be prepared to get the [expletive] beat out of him, actually."
