Chael Sonnen came out with yet more outrageous statements about the MMA landscape when he appeared on MMA Connected. While his comments are nonsensical and obviously untrue they were lauded by his Amen corner in the MMA press as yet another example of the controversial persona that has made Sonnen such a must-see attraction in the sport. Unfortunately this is not true, those HILARIOUS quips are actually completely counterproductive.
Combat Sports matchmaking is based around getting people excited about a clash of personalities, often based on the dynamic between what in pro-wrestling would be called a babyface (good guy) and a heel (bad guy). With his wild boasts and consistent lying, Sonnen can’t help but come across as the heel. And yet, Sonnen should not be a heel. He is trying to position himself as a challenger in a division where the champion is Anderson Silva. Silva is in the eyes of most fans and his UFC persona a bad guy – he’s arrogant, aloof, cocky, weird, disrespectful and so much more. If Sonnen was a clever a self-marketer as people claim he is then he would be positioning himself to be a BABYFACE…something that until recently (i.e. before the drugs bust) wouldn’t have been too difficult as he’s good looking, well spoken, American and has a legitimate sports background.
Indeed that was exactly what Sonnen was doing in the early stages of the build-up to his fight against Silva. It was only when people started acting as if he was the inventor of trash talking that he started just coming up with whatever random, nonsensical shit popped into his had. It is not a good idea for a fighter that you should be wanting fans to root for and get behind in his quest to defeat the hated, unbeatable champion to be consistently saying things that everyone knows are not only untrue but ludicrously so.
Again going back to the fight against Silva – in the early build his promos were focused on explaining to people why he could beat Silva, how his skillset matched up uniquely well against the champion’s. Again that’s great – Sonnen was selling his strengths to convince people that he could win. But that message relies on Sonnen being credible, something that as the fight drew he near he became progressively less so as he consistently came out with random shit that everyone knew was untrue.
That’s why the all important last-week build for UFC 117 didn’t click. By almost any measurement Sonnen’s marketing of UFC 117 was a flop. His pre-fight promos did not convince the fans to cheer for him against a fighter coming off perhaps the most notorious performance in a championship fight in the sport’s history. Judging from the crowd’s astonishment when he successfully started putting some offense together he had also clearly failed to convince them in advance that he could win.
And most importantly he failed to convince an above average people to actually buy the pay per view. UFC 117 was purchased 600,000 times despite a stacked line up that include TUF10 winner Roy Nelson in a final eliminator, Clay Guida and Matt Hughes. A yeah before Silva was the co-main event of a show that did 900,000 buys, a number most people credited to his fight against Forrest Griffin. He had also recently main evented UFC 97 that did 650,000 buys and UFC 112 that despite being an overseas show did 500,000 (a company record for a non-North American show). What’s more Silva’s next fight against Vitor Belfort at UFC 126 drew 725,000 buys!!!
So no matter what the Chael Sonnen apologists try to claim he has not, at any point, proven himself to be a draw. While he may be a great stand-up comedian but the facts quite simply speak for themselves.
