After all the drama surrounding the cancelation of UFC 151 because of Jon Jones’ refusal to fight Chael Sonnen on short notice, the UFC finally has the fight it wanted. UFC President Dana White told the LA Times’ Lance Pugmire that Chael Sonnen and Jon Jones will serve as coaches for the third edition of “The Ultimate Fighter” on FX, and then fight in April.

The show is set to begin shooting in two weeks, with the “TUF” finale in April.

“This should be a good one,” White said of matching arguably his organization’s best fighter against its top personality. “Jon has accepted the fight. He knows the fans want to see that fight.”

Jones’ fight date is not for six months because he needs some time off to recover from the arm injury suffered in a win over Vitor Belfort last month.

As embarrassed as Dana White was to cancel the entire UFC 151 card, he has to be feeling almost the opposite now. Jones’ talent combined with Sonnen’s personality and ability to trash talk should not only send ratings for “TUF” sky-rocketing, but they should also produce excellent pay-per-view buy numbers. The organization will also have several months to properly promote the fight, unlike the UFC 151 card which would have been organized on short notice.

It truly seems like this is a middle ground between Jones and the UFC, and a sign that the two sides are repairing their relationship. And you know that Sonnen is dying for this; he’s been steadily baiting Jones over Twitter for the last several months, even sending the note below a few weeks ago over Twitter:

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Jon Jones ripped Chael Sonnen and revealed his disappointment with Dana White in his first extended interview since the UFC 151 debacle.

Jones discussed many topics with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani on Tuesday, including his negative thoughts about Chael Sonnen.

“Chael Sonnen? He’s a punk. He’s a thug,” Jones said. “He calls himself the ‘American Gangster’ and he ratted on all of his friends in the money laundering situation. And he calls himself gangster? That’s not gangster. The guys a straight punk that uses his mouth. He won’t be remembered in history because he loses. People remember in history the winners, not people with big mouths.”

Jones also called Sonnen “irrelevant,” saying, “his mouth is the only gift that he has.”

Jones notably denied the Wrestling Observer report that said he asked Dana White to have Chael Sonnen stop harassing him. He also denied that Dana White told him the entire UFC 151 card would be cancelled if he turned down his fight. That’s contrary to what White told the media on a conference call; he said Jones knew the consequences, so one of them most not be completely telling the truth.

Jones also said he was “hurt” by Dana White ripping him.

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Jon Jones continues to look worse and worse with every day that passes. Bloody Elbow dug up a quote from an interview Jones gave last week where he said he’d fight Chael Sonnen “in a heartbeat.”

Jones joined “The Abe Kanan Show” on SiriusXM radio last Saturday and discussed the possibility of a fight with Sonnen. Jones was adamant that Sonnen couldn’t just talk his way into a title shot because the UFC isn’t like the WWF. But Kanan began selling Jones on why fighting him would be a good idea, convincing him that he would destroy Sonnen and put the loudmouth in check.

Kanan: “Why not just take the fight, do it, and make a lot of money?”

Jones: “I totally agree, and I’m not sitting here saying that I wouldn’t take the fight. I would take the fight in a heartbeat.”

Of course we learned five days later that Jones was full of crap, because he declined a fight with Sonnen leading to the cancellation of the entire UFC 151 card.

If you ask me how I account for the change in opinion, I think it’s pretty simple: What you heard in the interview was Jon Jones the fighter talking, and the person who declined the fight was Jon Jones the businessman acting under the influence of his trainer. Or maybe when he said he’d fight Sonnen in a heartbeat, it was said under the assumption that he would have proper preparation and a full training camp.

You can listen to the exchange in the clip below (warning: Kanan drops an f-bomb):

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