Three-time UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen said he is not retiring from mixed martial arts and has called out popular former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva.
Sonnen, who hinted that he had possibly competed in the Octagon for the last time following his first-round TKO loss to Jon Jones in the main event at UFC 159 last Saturday, made the announcement in an interview with Kenny Florian Tuesday night on the FUEL TV show UFC Tonight.
“I’ll definitely continue (to fight), and at 205 pounds, unless they (the UFC matchmakers) come up with a catchweight… I’m not going to be in contendership anytime soon,” Sonnen explained. “I have a lot of goals I want to achieve still and retirement won’t help me get that done.”
The talk of Sonnen fighting Silva has been around for several years, but a matchup never came to fruition.
Silva, a longtime light-heavyweight, debuted in the UFC’s middleweight division in February 2010, while Sonnen was the No. 1 contender in that division at the time. Silva dealt with a long layoff after his debut at 185 pounds and was not ranked high in the division after a knockout loss to Chris Leben in his return bout, while Sonnen worked his way back to another title shot.
All in all the matchup never made sense.
“Now I think the fight does make a little bit more sense,” Sonnen said. “I’m not going anywhere until me and Wanderlei straighten this thing out once and for all.”
Sonnen and Silva have a history of verbal exchanges.
“Wanderlei pulled a real dirtbag move on me one time,” Sonnen recalled. “We’re in a van together, he mutters something at me, I can’t understand what he’s saying, truly I can’t understand it, he then puts it on YouTube with subtitles because he knows that I can’t understand … essentially he tells me off and it looks as though I’m conceding to him. … If you’re a fighter, that doesn’t fly. If a guy calls you out, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a van or not, you must respond to him.
“I’m ready to respond, Wanderlei.”
This is the encounter in question seen here (from 3:51 to 5:12) in a video blog from Silva, which was posted in September 2010:
Silva recently moved backup to the 205-pound division, knocking out Brian Stann in a thrilling tilt in Japan in March, and Sonnen believes light-heavyweight presents more opportunities for him at this stage of his career and said not having to cut as much weight is significant.
“My problem at 185 is there was no one left to fight,” Sonnen explained. “I had fought everybody in the top 10, including the champion a couple times, I just wasn’t going to get that opportunity again… so I move up to 205 and get a fresh coat of paint and start over.
“Well now I’ve got a problem there too. I’ve fought the champion; it wasn’t a competitive enough match to warrant doing it again, so what do I do? The thing for me at this point, it was just a better experience not having to get that weight off. I’d rather have to give up the size but have a smile on my face.”
Sonnen said he plans on taking a bit of time off to recoup from his loss to Jones, while Silva doesn’t have a fight lined up, which leads one to believe a Sonnen-Silva matchup is a realistic possibility for sometime in 2013.
MORE FROM SONNEN
On loss to Jon Jones…
Often one to badmouth his opponents, or “truth talk” as he puts it, Sonnen was complimentary of his fellow The Ultimate Fighter 17 coach.
“This was like getting into a bear cage. This guy was a monster of a man,” Sonnen said of Jones. “We weighed in at the same thing the day before; I don’t know how that was possible. I put my arms around him and I was literally thinking in the middle of the fist fight, ‘Oh my God, you’re a big guy’ as I had him grabbed.”
The fight was stopped with 27 seconds remaining in the first round, but Jones grotesquely broke his left big toe midway through the stanza. Had Sonnen survived the round the fight likely would have been stopped due to Jones’ injury and Sonnen would have be crowned champion.
“Diplomatically, you don’t ever want to win that way,” Sonnen said. “The reality? I would have grabbed that belt, I’d have held it up, I would have taken that microphone and told the crowd, ‘The golden rule is he with the gold rules,’ and I’d have walked out of there to the boos and I’d have never looked back.”
On who’s better: Jones or Anderson Silva?
Sonnen is one of three fighters to have competed against both Jones and Silva – Vitor Belfort and Stephan Bonnar are the others – which makes him as qualified as anyone to compare Jones and Silva.
“I don’t really see a comparison. It’s Jon Jones,” Sonnen suggested.
“When I hear you ask me the question, ‘Who’s better?’ what I think you’re asking me is straight up, ‘Who would win if these two fought?’ and Jon Jones is just too much man. He’s too big of a guy; he’s too long and rangy; he’s too young for that matter. And that isn’t to take away from Anderson. I want to pick my words carefully; I don’t want to sit here and act like I’m putting down Anderson; Anderson’s a great fighter, he’s just not going to beat Jon Jones.”
Talk of a Silva vs. Georges St-Pierre super-fight has quieted down of late within the MMA community, and now most super-fight talk has shifted to a potential Jones vs. Silva matchup.
Following UFC 159, UFC president Dana White said he received a call from Silva in which the middleweight champion asked White for a super-fight. White wouldn’t say if Silva was talking about Jones or GSP.
Silva meets Chris Weidman at UFC 162 in July and insists he is focused on defending his belt.
