When Chael Sonnen was involved in the sport, he quickly gain the attention of the masses after his repeated trash talking of his opponents. In July 2014, he was found guilty of using a myriad of performance enhancing drugs, and was suspended for two years.
After the decision, Sonnen announced his retirement from the sport and since then has repeatedly claimed that he would never be coming back. The promotional mastermind persona that Sonnen repeatedly transformed into (known as “Chael P.”) seemed to be gone for good.
Until Monday.
On MMAFighting’s The MMA Hour, Chael suddenly burst into life, bellowing the grandiose statements of old, and with them, started to turn up the heat on speculation that perhaps the American Gangster isn’t as done as he perhaps let on.
“The truth is, I will sell out these arenas faster than anybody,” Sonnen said. “The same as I used to. I will sell out the t-shirts. I will sell them all out faster than anyone. Look, it’s the reality of the situation. A comeback fight is a tremendously big fight and you only get one of them. I’m not coming back. But if I did, if I were to do it, I would know how to do it.
“I would pick an opponent. I would know what to do, I would have the whole thing built up. There’s not very many people that can do this business very well. It’s a unique business. Conor (McGregor) does a really good job. He read the playbook, he gets it, and then he’s added to it. Conor’s got stuff where I would be like, oh, I see what you did there. But there’s just not very many guys who get it. And as far as competitively goes, man, come on. Who are you going to take over Chael P. at 185?
“You line them up, I would run through them all. What are you going to do? You’re just going to throw me right back into a title (picture)? I would take the title at 185. I mean, come on, it’s nothing personal but that was my weight class until I decided to leave that weight class. There is no doubt about it. There is no way to doubt that statement.”
So, should the Portland, Oregon native decide to return, who would it be against? Despite repeatedly claiming he definitely, absolutely, surely won’t be coming back, Sonnen still managed to muster up a top five list of opponents he would like to return against in rapid fire. The top of that list? Fellow retiree, Georges St-Pierre.
“I would love to kick Georges’ ass,” Sonnen said. “I’ll tell you this. This is a true story. I got a call one day and it was from Kenny Florian, and he says ‘hey, you want to work out?’ I was in LA and I said yeah, and he goes, ‘okay, well Georges is in town. Do you want to work out with Georges?’ And I said yeah. So we go to this gym.
“We went hard. I think I could’ve gone harder, but we went hard, and I came in second. And it drove me nuts, man. It drove me nuts. But I really think I could’ve done better. It was close. It was fine. If you ask him, he might try to put me over. I’m not trying to put him over right now, I’m just telling you what happened. He won that go, but I could’ve done better with him, and it’s driven me nuts ever since. I thought, man, I could’ve gotten that guy. I could’ve done better.
“He knew he got the best of me, so at the end of the workout, he tried to pay me a compliment. He goes, ‘thanks for not using your size; if you would’ve used your size, you really could’ve crushed me,’ which was really his way of saying, ‘hey man, I just beat you.’ And I knew what he meant, and I knew it was meant to be a nice thing. It stuck with me, man. This is a workout that was years ago and it stuck with me.”
Sonnen’s suspension is due to be completed in July of this year, but he faces a slight speed bump in the name of USADA. As a retired fighter, Sonnen is required to give the UFC’s anti-doping partner four months notice before being allowed to return. As a man with a well known history of PED usage, it’s likely USADA will want to test Sonnen.
Especially after repeatedly referring to his own biceps as huge while being “basically clean!”
