Sept. 1, 2012 was a quiet day in the world of mixed martial arts. All across the land, fight fans mourned in silence as their TVs gathered dust and their cable bills remained stagnant.

UFC 151, scheduled for that first day in September, was officially dead. And the only contest to take its place was an especially vicious installment of the blame game.

Sep1.2012 6 years ago today, UFC 151 featuring Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson was scheduled to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada. This was the first cancelled event in promotional history. pic.twitter.com/io3r5KzFq4 — MMA History Today (@MMAHistoryToday) September 1, 2018

It all started a little over a week earlier, when UFC executives convened a conference call with reporters to announce some bad news. Dan Henderson was injured, they said, and he was forced to withdraw from his light heavyweight title fight with reigning champion Jon Jones. Chael Sonnen, an old friend and former teammate of Henderson’s, had volunteered to take his place.

But Jones had refused the late change of opponents, based in part on the advice of his coach, Greg Jackson. With the headliner scratched, UFC officials decided to cancel the event entirely – a first for the Zuffa-owned UFC.

“UFC 151 will be remembered as the event Jon Jones and Greg Jackson murdered,” UFC President Dana White told reporters.

Somehow, that was actually one of the tamer White quotes to emerge from that media call. The UFC boss did not hesitate to lay the entirety of the blame on Jones and Jackson. He predicted that fans would do the same, not to mention all the fighters who’d been scheduled to fight on the UFC 151 undercard. White called Jones’ choice not to fight a late replacement “one of the most selfish, disgusting decisions” he’d ever seen a fighter make.

“This is affecting 16 other lives, their families,” White said. “Kids are going back to school. The list goes on and on of all the things, the money that was spent for fighters to train and the list goes on and on. Like I said, I don’t think this is going to make Jon Jones popular with the fans, sponsors, cable distributors, television network executives or other fighters.”

Just one week before the scheduled fight, Dan Henderson ruptured his MCL and was forced to withdraw from the contest. Chael Sonnen called Dana White and offered to fight Jones on one week's notice. — MMA History Today (@MMAHistoryToday) September 1, 2018

As for Jackson, who told his fighter that it would be a mistake to defend his title against a completely different kind of opponent than the one they’d been preparing for all training camp?

“I’ll go on the record saying (Jackson) is a (expletive) sport-killer,” White said. “This guy is from another planet. I’ve never even seen anything like it in my life.”

Of course, not everyone agreed that the issue was so clear cut. After all, it’s not like this was the first UFC headliner to get scratched on short notice. If the UFC had booked a stronger undercard, perhaps the lineup could have withstood the loss of one fight. And if the company hadn’t been so overextended by its own breakneck schedule of events, maybe there would have been more available fighters to help carry the load.

Plus, it later came out that Henderson had been injured for weeks, but tried to struggle through it so he could stay in the fight. If he’d withdrawn with a month left to go rather than a week, Jones might have decided that he had enough time to prepare for a different opponent.

But those what-ifs would have to stay hypotheticals. After the cancellation, Jones apologized to fans and fellow fighters on Twitter, but clearly didn’t agree that he deserved so much of the blame, writing that he was “carrying the cross for my company’s decision.”

Jackson, too, was forced to defend himself in public.

“I was asked if it was smart to take a fight on three days’ notice, and I don’t think it’s smart to do that,” Jackson said. “Three days to fight a guy that caliber is not a smart thing to do. I’m not trying to ruin the sport or cancel an event. I don’t know about that stuff, but thought it wasn’t a wise course of action.”

The cancellation would prove to have lasting repercussions for all parties involved. The rift between Jones and White never really healed. White’s description of Jackson as a “sport-killer” became a sort of inside joke that still lives on in some corners of the MMA internet. Jones’ popularity with fans, and his reliability as a pay-per-view draw, took a significant and immediate dip.

Jones would rebound by facing Vitor Belfort at UFC 152 a few weeks later, and the UFC’s decision to let Belfort fight despite suspiciously high levels of testosterone would later become a major scandal that Jones took as proof that the UFC saw him as little more than an expendable asset.

That following spring, Jones and Sonnen did fight – and this time Jones had adequate time to prepare. That proved to be trouble for Sonnen, who was steamrolled and stopped in the first round, before the referee or cageside doctors had a chance to notice that Jones had badly injured his toe in the process.

Jones' camp rejected the fight, as they wanted more time to prepare for a specific opponent. A few months later, Jones fought Sonnen and finished him in the first round. — MMA History Today (@MMAHistoryToday) September 1, 2018

The proposed matchup with Henderson never materialized in the UFC, but was instead settled in a grappling competition years later, where Jones easily submitted his much older opponent.

As for the UFC, which had never cancelled an event before and treated the occasion as if it were nothing short of a national travesty? Two years later it cancelled another one, this time after an injury to headliner Jose Aldo a few weeks before UFC 176. Somehow, that one didn’t require a firestorm of blame. Instead, life simply went on.

For complete coverage of UFC 151, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

“Today in MMA History” is an MMAjunkie series created in association with MMA History Today, the social media outlet dedicated to reliving “a daily journey through our sport’s history.”