Sonnen progressing on his road back to the octagon
Chael Sonnen burst onto the mainstream MMA scene in 2010 for his repetitive, but often funny, trash talk leading up to his fight with Anderson Silva at UFC 117 in August.
Sonnen backed up that talk by dominating Silva for four-and-a-half rounds before Silva secured an arm triangle submission in the final minute of the fight.
The performance was inspiring, but it was erased by a failed post-fight drug test which showed increased levels of testosterone. Sonnen claimed he had cleared testosterone replacement therapy with the proper authorities, but that was not the case.
Sonnen was suspended for six months from competition, but is now on the road back. Before returning to competition, Sonnen still has some work to do, as he told MMAFighting.com’s Mike Chiappetta.
A return to action will not come, however, until Sonnen steps before the Nevada state athletic commission again. During CSAC testimony last December, Sonnen told commissioners that he had cleared his testosterone replacement therapy use in Nevada with its athletic commission executive direction Keith Kizer. Kizer, however, disputed that. The sides met recently and Sonnen voiced a hope that a second meeting would give more clarity to his situation.
Saying he incorrectly phrased his testimony, Sonnen took blame for the mistake and anticipated the opportunity to allay the concerns of the influential Nevada commission.
“All the frustration and all of the blame is on me,” he said. “I’m the one that chose my words. I’m the one that said when I was in California, I represented to them that I had a conversation with Kizer and he approved my medicine use. That is not correct. Those are the wrong words. My manager had the conversation. I relied on information my manager gave me. So director Kizer is absolutely correct. He’s correct to be frustrated. I chose the words. It comes to me. Now, I wasn’t attempting to mislead anybody, but they’re my words all the same, so I should have to answer to Kizer.”
“I need to clear the air with him and more importantly, I need to clear it on the record,” he said. “My takeaway from the meeting with Kizer was not ‘We don’t want to work with you again.’ It was simply, ‘There’s been some mistakes. Our reservation is you’re going to repeat them.’ That’s not going to happen, but what he wants to do is give me an opportunity to speak on the record so that we can get everything recorded and written down and make sure we don’t do those things again. If i was in Kizer’s shoes, I wouldn’t demand anything less.”
Sonnen is still one of the more polarizing fighters in all of MMA and his return will be good for the UFC.
He was expected to get a title rematch with Silva prior to his failed drug test, but he now has to make his way back up the division ladder.
In terms of whom his next opponent will be, Sonnen added this in the interview:
“I called (the UFC) up and said, ‘Give me the worst guy you’ve got under contract,'” he said. “They said, ‘Chael, Wanderlei [Silva] won’t fight you.’ I said, ‘Alright. Give me the second worst guy you’ve got under contract?’ They said, ‘Chael, how many times do we have to tell you: [Mirko] Cro Cop’s a heavyweight.’ I said, ‘Alright, is there anybody available? How about Bisping? Is his dance card open? And then they said that might be a possibility. So that’s where we left off. But that’s just not my focus. My focus is making things right with director Kizer.”
Sonnen clearly hasn’t lost his sense of humor and ability to promote fights but time will tell if his fighting ability has taken a hit from the layoff.
Posted in: Events, Fighters, News, UFC
Tags: Anderson Silva, Chael Sonnen, Keith Kizer, MMA, UFC, UFC 117
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