Growing up, my father often warned me to stay away from a certain kind of people. The kind that know no bounds and will say whatever comes to mind.
The kind that will converse their way into chaos and conflict. They raise hell and take you along for the ride. Those people are nothing but trouble, my father said.
In the sometimes backwards world of combat sports, talking your way into a fight is considered a good thing. The trash talker is heard, applauded and punched for his efforts. One could argue that trash-talk-do is a martial art of its own. And in the brief history of MMA, none have mastered this style of boast-fu like one Chael P. Sonnen.
Following (another) failed drug test earlier this week, Sonnen announced his retirement from competitive mixed martial arts. It’s another case of ‘he said, she said’ between a fighter and a state commission, not to mention the Silva-Belfort drama. But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to look back at the villain. The self-proclaimed ‘American Gangster’.
He was without question a damn good fighter. Still, it’s his actions outside of the cage that will prove most memorable.
A highlight reel of Chael Sonnen’s career won’t feature him in the Octagon with gloves on. His venue of choice was a camera and he fought with a microphone in hand – his words a swift left hook and his insults dizzying like a rear-naked choke.
Here was a man who wasn’t afraid to insult any fighter.
“Listen Wanderlei, I will do a home invasion on you. I will cut the power to your house and the next thing you’ll hear is me climbing up your stairs in a pair of night vision goggles I bought in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine.”
“I’ll pick the lock to the master room door, take a picture of you in bed with the Nogueira brothers working on your ‘jiu-jitsu’. I’ll take said quote unquote photograph, post it at dorksfrombrazil.com, password – not required, username – not required. That, Wanderlei, is how you threaten someone. Dummy.”
Or any country, for that matter.
“I was in Las Vegas when the Nogueira brothers first touched down in America. There was a bus, this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Little Nog tried to feed it a carrot, while Big Nog was petting it. He thought it was a horse. This really happened. He tried to feed a bus a carrot, and now you’re telling me this country has computers? I didn’t know that.”
Even ring card girls weren’t spared.
“We only had one [ring girl] and that was Chandella. The other was the IQ card girl. Arianny kind of walks around and holds up her latest test score. One time when there was a title fight, she got all the way up to five and we were very proud of her.”
In 2010, Sonnen was set to square off against Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title. It was in the build-up for this fight that we witnessed the bad guy come into his own. In a multi-cultural sport his gimmick was part pro-wrestling heel, part American bravado. A barrage of one-sided trash talk and quote-worthy sound bites told the story leading into UFC 117.
Pure promotion, most thought. Surely, a former UFC washout with losses to Forrest Griffin and Demian Maia stood no chance against the invincible Silva?
Had logic prevailed, this tribute would be all for nought. But like Ali before him, this trash talker would shock the world and for the first time the champion was battered into mortality. Unlike Ali, Sonnen would come up short, as a triangle choke midway through the final round derailed his championship hopes.
True to form, Sonnen wasn’t silenced by the loss. “On the streets of West Linn, Oregon, if you lay on your back with your legs wrapped around a man’s head for eight seconds, that does not make you a winner. That makes…not a winner.”
As he shifts into retirement and continues his role as an analyst for FOX, it’s a certainty that we haven’t heard the last of Chael P. Sonnen. He raised hell and took us along for the ride. He was plenty of trouble and I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it.
Say goodnight to the bad guy.
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