Leave it to tonight’s UFC light heavyweight title challenger Chael Sonnen to come up with a quality sound bit at a moment’s notice.
Speaking with ESPN on Friday, “The American Gangster” threw some verbal jabs at Anderson Silva prior to his title fight with 205-pound champ Jon Jones tonight at UFC 159.
"Anderson sucks, and Anderson's won a whole bunch of fights. I don't want to disparage Anderson, I accept the outcome of the duel. But he didn't want to do that fight. He tried to get out of the fight, he tried to get disqualified at the weigh-in, he tried to get disqualified during the fight, he tried all of that just to get out of it,” Sonnen said.
“With all that said he still found a way to win. I admire that, I respect that in him, but at the end of the day I whipped his ass for 30 minutes. He got the jump on me for less than 30 seconds. There's no way you can watch us fight and come out saying Anderson's the better fighter.”
Love him or hate him, it’s tough to deny that “The American Gangster” has some validity in his statement.
In their first UFC middleweight title fight at UFC 117 in August 2010, Sonnen dominated Silva for four-and-a-half rounds before “The Spider” pulled out a miraculous triangle choke submission midway through the fifth and final round.
At their long-awaited rematch at UFC 148 this past July, Sonnen immediately scored a takedown and controlled Silva and round 1 before suffering a TKO loss in round 2.
The way Sonnen sees it, if MMA pundits expect Silva to beat Jones in a superfight, how can they possibly expect Jones to beat Sonnen?
“I hear people say I'm an 11/1 underdog against Jon Jones, and I may well be. But those same people think Anderson can beat him? I stomped Anderson Silva, we're not even close. So it's kind of a little bit of a head-scratcher."
Sonnen’s only losses since February 2009 have come against Silva, defeating top 10 middleweights Yushin Okami, Nate Marquardt, Brian Stann and Michael Bisping along the way.
Does the Team Quest standout actually pose a real threat against Jones tonight or is this on instance where the oddsmakers got it right?