Dana White is notorious for his long workdays and for going to great lengths to try to achieve the impossible.

He so badly wanted to sign Fedor Emelianenko a few years ago that he flew to an island near Venezuela to negotiate with the Russian’s management team. The security arrangements alone for that meeting are probably worthy of a book.

View photos

But coming off UFC 153, the indefatigable White should have spent his days, as well as his nights, working to put together a fight between light heavyweight champion Jon Jones and middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

It's the fight that mixed martial arts fans want to see more than any other. It's the fight that would do the biggest business. It's the fight that would match the Nos. 1 and 2 rated fighters in the world.

It's the only fight that made sense and it was White's job to try to get it done.

He doesn't always come through – who does? – but he rarely fails to exhaust every effort in the process.

This time, though, he failed, and in a big way. Instead of pushing and prodding and demanding and cajoling Jones and Silva to fight each other in a match for the ages, he took the easy path.

[More Kevin Iole: Giving Chael Sonnen a shot denigrates light heavyweight title]

Confronted with an injury to Jones' right elbow that will keep him out until April, White opted to have Jones spend the next few months in Las Vegas coaching on "The Ultimate Fighter."

That was a good choice. Jones has gotten a lot of bad media recently and could use the exposure the reality series will bring him.

The bad part is that White opted to pair Jones against Chael Sonnen, the trash-talking self-proclaimed gangster from West Linn, Ore., who is not only coming off a loss, he's yet to win a fight at light heavyweight in the UFC.

Without question, Sonnen talked his way into the match, which he readily admitted on an often-surreal conference call Wednesday.

"As far as talking my way into it, what do I care about that?" Sonnen said. "So what? I talked my way into it. I wanted it and I got it. I talked a cat out of a tree earlier today. I'll do whatever I want. I've gotten plenty of jobs I wasn't qualified for and I went in and I got promoted anyway."

That flies in the face of what White said he would allow when he was asked on a Las Vegas radio show on Aug. 21 if he'd give Sonnen a title shot were he to beat Forrest Griffin at UFC 155.

The Griffin-Sonnen bout is now canceled since Sonnen will be on "The Ultimate Fighter," but White's remarks at the time were unequivocal.

"Yeah, he's a long way away," White said during the interview with Dave Farra and Dave Mahoney. "He's not coming off the Silva fight and just talking his way into a 205-pound world title shot. He's going to have to beat a couple of the best in the world, you know? If he beats Forrest, we'll shoot him right into the top five. Let him beat some of those guys there and we'll see what happens."

[Related: Dan Henderson lays into Dana White for Sonnen-Jones matchup]

White's explanation for why that changed doesn't wash. He told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday, and then said repeatedly during the conference call on Wednesday that other contenders turned the fight with Jones down. But he was referencing the match with Jones at UFC 152, which became necessary when Dan Henderson was injured and pulled out of his fight with UFC 151. Several fighters declined to fight at UFC 151 on short notice, but Sonnen agreed to take on Jones.

Story continues