Chael Sonnen's War of Words

Chael Sonnen says he trains to be a champion, and he gets that chance at UFC 117 in August

Even though they are not scheduled to fight until August, Chael Sonnen is doing his best to make certain that Anderson Silva knows who he will be defending the UFC Middleweight Championship belt against. For the past several weeks, Sonnen has been letting loose with an onslaught of words that seem to be getting under the skin of Anderson Silva. At the recent UFC Fan Expo, Sonnen reiterated the fact that he never strived to be the number one contender, he has always trained to be the champion. Sonnen suggested that while his demeanor may appear to be humble now, once he wins the belt (not if he wins the belt, but once he wins it), he may turn out to be a bit of a jerk.

Let’s backtrack for a bit and review Chael Sonnen’s UFC career to date.

In his UFC debut, he lost to Demian Maia by triangle choke in the first round.
Sonnen then fought and defeated Dan Miller by way of unanimous decision. To be fair, Sonnen was quite a step up in competition for Miller, as he had fought some relatively new fighters up to that point in his UFC career. Seeing as Miller has lost 3 consecutive unanimous decisions, he may not be the fighter that he appeared to be against fighters like Rob Kimmons.
In his third fight in the Octagon, Sonnen defeated Yushin Okami by way of unanimous decision after 3 rounds.
Sonnen’s most recent, and probably most significant, unanimous decision came against former title contender Nate Marquardt. Sonnen used a heavy dosage of “lay and pray” to grind out a victory over Marquardt.

In fights previous to his current stint in the UFC, Sonnen has been defeated by Forrest Griffin (triangle choke), three times by Jeremy Horn (cut, guillotine, armbar), Terry Martin, Babalu Sobral (triangle choke), and Paulo Filho (armbar). He is also the only fighter to ever defeat Paulo Fihlo in a professional MMA contest.

Chael Sonnen dominated Nate Marquardt for three rounds at UFC 109 in February and is now next in line for a middleweight title shot.

Looking at Sonnen’s UFC resume, does he really have any reason to be so brashly confident, months before he takes on Anderson Silva? Honestly, Silva has a blackbelt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and poses just as much a threat to Sonnen as the aforementioned men that submitted Sonnen. Perhaps Chael is just trying to get into the head of the champion, although starting this far in advance seems like it could be just wild ranting in hopes of gaining notoriety. Sonnen is, after all, running for a seat in Oregon’s House of Representative and he would hardly be the first fighter/politician, though a bit of name recognition couldn’t hurt him.

Looking at the situation from afar, I think Sonnen needs to take a long look inside before he continues to run his mouth off at the champion. While Silva’s last 3 defenses of his Middleweight belt have been lackluster (against Patrick Cote, Thales Leites, and Demian Maia), Silva has proven that he can still bring it in the cage. When fighting at light heavyweight against James Irvin, and later against former champion Forrest Griffin, Silva spent less than 5 minutes in the cage total against the larger men and left the cage with two thunderous knockout victories.

Even if Sonnen manages to get the fight to the ground, he still needs to be concerned with the above average ground skills of Anderson Silva. In Silva’s match with Dan Henderson, a teammate of Sonnen’s at Team Quest, Henderson managed to take Silva to the ground and utilize his ground and pound and general mat control to make Silva seem beatable inside the Octagon. In the second round, however, Silva managed to improve his position and choke out Henderson. Sonnen should refer to this fight often in the coming months in preparation for Silva. Sonnen can see that Henderson (who in my mind is a better wrestler inside the Octagon when he chooses, than Sonnen) managed to take Silva down and hold him there, but only for a short time. Silva will not allow Sonnen to just lie on top of him and slowly grind out a victory. Silva will be working to get his hips up and take the fight back to a standing battle. Sonnen should also realize that Henderson has him beat in striking prowess as well, and Henderson wanted very little to do with Anderson Silva on the feet. Henderson seemed to think his best bet was to wear Silva out and possibly finish him later on in the fight. Silva had other plans and so this outcome should weigh heavy in the mind of Chael Sonnen: Silva defeated Dan Henderson, who has better MMA wrestling abilities as well as better stand-up striking.

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In a previous article, I broke down the possible challengers for the UFC Middleweight belt in Anderson Silva's next fight. I completely overlooked Sonnen because I honestly did not think he had done enough in the UFC to earn a title shot. No matter what anyone thinks, Sonnen is the next challenger to Anderson Silva’s throne. Though we have to wait until August to learn the outcome of the fight, one thing we do know already is that Dana White will not tolerate another performance by Silva that borders on mockery and disrespect that he has put forth against Cote, Leites, and Maia. Silva will be looking to remind all of the disbelievers why he belongs at the top of the pound-for-pound rankings. If Sonnen can back up all of his brash talk and defeat Silva, then we will have a new UFC middleweight champion. If Silva manages to successfully defend his title, then Sonnen will look to have a successful career as a politician as he already has the knack of making promises and failing to deliver. Though we will have to wait until August 7th to know who wins the fight in the Octagon, we know for sure already that Sonnen is way ahead on the scorecards in the war of words.

By Curt Heinrichs
ProFighting-fans.com MMA Staff Writer