Chael Sonnen: The Man, The Myth, The Mouth.......

Chael Sonnen: The Man, The Myth, The Mouth.......​

It seems no one loves the sound of Chael Sonnen’s voice more than Chael Sonnen. And it doesn’t seem a day goes by in the lead up to his UFC Middleweight Championship bout with Anderson Silva that Sonnen, and the rest of us, get to enjoy more and more of his ridiculous banter.

If you fell for even 10 percent of Sonnen’s incessant trash talk, he would have you believe he was capable of doing everything from pounding a hole in Silva’s face to forcing the sport’s top fighter into an early retirement. Additionally he might convince you that Silva, and many of the Spider’s esteemed training partners, were MMA hacks with no business being in a UFC cage.

There’s just one problem. Few people outside MMA’s hardcore fans knew who Chael Sonnen was before he was picked to fight Anderson Silva. Not many new MMA fans are likely to remember Sonnen’s first UFC go round in which he wound up on the short end of submissions at the hands of Babalu and Jeremy Horn. And probably only a handful more fans know about Sonnen’s 3-fight stint in the WEC where Chael split bookend fights against the WEC’s then Middleweight Champion Paulo Filho.

Adding even further to Sonnen’s lack of recognition is the fact that he might very well be best known in his second UFC tour of duty for being the victim of a sick Demian Maia triangle choke. It was a highlight reel finish that made Maia a sensation and left Sonnen as simply ‘that guy that got choked out‘.

Fortunately for MMA fans and the UFC, Chael Sonnen can actually fight. And it seems that, at 33 years old, he might have finally found the right mixture of intensity and intelligence. The balls-to-the-walls mentality that was so often his downfall in the past, especially in his multiple submission loses, has been slightly curbed and blended with just the right pinch of maturity. And the results are starting to show.

Since the loss to Maia, Sonnen has ripped off three consecutive UFC victories in the span of 9 months with each being a little more impressive than the one before. None of these wins showed the improvement in Sonnen’s game more than his domination of Nate Marquardt who was the UFC’s top 185 pound contender and on a short list of possible challengers for Silva’s title. Unfortunately Marquardt ran into a version of Chael Sonnen that few people expected to see. He ran into a Chael Sonnen that used superb wrestling, fought through multiple deep submission attempts, and just plain out-worked him.

And that is today’s version of Chael Sonnen. It isn’t quite what he would have you believe with his multiple trash talking sound bites. But it is still a version that can’t be considered anything less than a live opponent for Anderson Silva. While Sonnen might never be capable of ‘pounding a hole’ in Silva’s face, he is definitely a fighter capable of pushing Silva as hard as we’ve seen anyone push him in several years. ​

 

Yes.

 

Nice work, Trplsecartie:

Seriously, you have Sonnen spot on. The guy is an athletic nerd. I actually can't stand his smacktalk. He comes off as a complete nerd in my mind.

 

I like his smacktalk.MMA needs it in my opinion.If he beats Silva he can be a mainstream hit.