“Chael Sonnen is the Sheriff in this town.” – Chael Sonnen
A man who has made his time in the UFC a very eventful one, some would say he talks his way into title fights, headliners, or coaching gigs. One thing’s for sure, you can not dispute that the man puts butts in seats and on the mat. Owner of one of the best double leg takedowns and top mat game, you can love him or you can hate him, but you have to understand one thing: he’s changed the game.
UFC 117 August 7th, 2010. Chael Sonnen challenges Anderson Silva for his Middleweight championship. What happened that night launched Sonnen into the mouth of every MMA website and fan alike up to the present day. For 22 minutes, Sonnen took Anderson down and punched every part of his face, dominating on the judges’ scorecards (40-34, 40-35, and 40-36 respectively) until a hole opened up and Anderson seized the opportunity to lock in a triangle choke to end the bout. A Hail Mary is a term more used in football but this was the grandest use of the word in recent MMA history. This bout was seen by 600K viewers and did a live gate of $1.56 million. Considered the best fight in 2010 Chael Sonnen elevated his game to the top of the division with his performance over the champ. All hyped up by the now characteristic of Sonnen, trash-talk.
Regardless of the negativity following his near victory Sonnen became a huge star and has continued the trend of trash-talking his opponent relentlessly before each fight. He has since moved on to talking about any fighter in any division, making claims of undefeated records, championships, and even calling himself the People’s Champion. This man has single handedly given up and comers a way to get themselves in the spotlight, and given old dogs new tricks to get high profile fights. Vitor Belfort took his idea and possibly talked himself into a Light Heavyweight title fight vs. Jon Jones. Then we would see Chael Sonnen return to the LHW division for the first time in 5 years to challenge the same man, Jones, for the same title. This run of high profile fights, championship bouts, and being on every writers keyboard at least once a month has done nothing but good for UFC PPV buys and live gates at each event.
The man Chael Sonnen might not be a champion. He might not be the greatest fighter in his time period. However, he is quite possibly the best talker in all of sports. With a Pro Wrestling talent to intrigue, anger, and humor audiences he has become a star in the UFC. Chael always has a fight on his radar, talking most notably about the Nogueira brothers and Wanderlei Silva, not to leave out Alistair Overeem, Welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre just to name a few.
In order to truly understand the fighter Chael Sonnen, you have to watch his fights, one must watch his interviews. Text does him no justice, the intensity and emotion he puts into each comment and each fight is the main reason people want to see him, not the trash talk, not the outlandish comments. People tune in to see him, fans tune in to see him to win, or to lose. He puts numbers up and has changed the landscape of matchmaking in the UFC, and definitely made Joe Silva’s job easier.
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