Is Chael Sonnen Being Given A Fair Shake?

via media.ufc.tv

On August 7th, Chael Sonnen and Anderson Silva will meet for the UFC middleweight championship of the world. And although Sonnen is the consensus #2 middleweight in the world , he is being given absolutely no chance by both fans and pundits a like. Well, let’s look at why that is, and what kind of chance Sonnen actually has in this fight.

First, let’s look at why Chael Sonnen isn’t taken seriously by fans and pundits going into this fight. The reason is two fold. First, Sonnen has lost in embarrassing fashion several times, in high profile fights. My first introduction to Sonnen was his fight with Renato "Babalu" Sobral at UFC 55, where at the end of the first round he was caught in a heel hook and turned directly into the camera and screamed in pain as he tried to fight out of it. He was then submitted in the second round with a triangle choke. In his first fight with Paulo Filho (a fight he was dominating), he was caught in an armbar and let out another scream, which prompted the referee to stop the fight. Against Demian Maia, he was swiftly thrown on his back and submitted with relative ease. These losses and the way they happened (especially with Sonnen’s screaming) lead a lot of people –even some of his opponents- to not take him seriously.

The second reason Chael Sonnen isn’t taken seriously is his personality. Sonnen has the heel persona down to such a fine art that the very mention of his name brings great wailing and gnashing of teeth among fans of the sport. I have been following this sport religiously for 5 years now, and I have never encountered a fighter that has produced this kind of visceral reaction from fans before. Tito Ortiz, Rashad Evans, Josh Koscheck, Shane Carwin and Frank Mir don’t even create a pimple on the ass of Chael Sonnen when it comes to the hate he breeds in fans. Try bringing up his name on an MMA message board sometime. It will be nothing but, "Anderson Silva is going to knock his ass OUT! He’s going to shut him up for good! He’s going to clown him! I hope Anderson Silva beats Sonnen so bad he can never fight again! YEAH!" It’s really hard to believe that this was a guy that a few years ago was perpetually stuck in the prelims and was considered a boring fighter. Now he’s invoking the most hate of any MMA fighter, perhaps ever? A few years ago no one outside the most hardcore of MMA fans knew or cared who Chael Sonnen was. He was just that guy who made funny noises when Babalu cranked on his ankle. Three years ago Chael Sonnen was fighting Kyacey Uscola in Sportfight for nickels. Now he’s fighting Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title? If anything, that’s some brilliant self marketing right there.

Now, let’s break down how Chael actually stacks up with Anderson Silva.

The common talking point I see from fans out there concerning this fight is that Anderson Silva is going to knock out Chael Sonnen. Well, that’s certainly a possibility- Anderson’s a great striker. Do I think it will happen? Probably not. Despite common perception, Anderson isn’t a big one and done kill shot striker. He usually puts guys away with long, prolonged volleys of punches, knees and kicks. Sonnen has shown a good chin in the past – he ate multiple flying knees from Nate Marquardt and hardly blinked. He’s only been TKO’ed twice in his career- once on a cut to Jeremy Horn, and once on a corner stoppage due to injury against Terry Martin, so he’s never been legitimately knocked out in his career. Now that I think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing him get dropped before in a fight.

But Sonnen knows that staying on the feet with Silva is just a recipe for disaster. He will most likely go for a takedown immediately, and more likely than not he will get all the takedowns he wants in this fight. Silva’s back has been put on the canvas in 5 of his 11 UFC appearances – against Travis Lutter, Nate Marquardt, Rich Franklin, Dan Henderson, and Thales Leites. The only one out of that bunch with wrestling anywhere near comparable to Chael Sonnen is Dan Henderson. Henderson was able to take Silva down in the first round without much trouble and hang out in half guard pretty much the entire time. With thirty seconds to go, he passed to side control, then screwed around long enough to get back into full guard before the round was out. Henderson was totally and completely gassed when he got up at the end of the round – he was still gasping for breath when he came out for the second, which is surprising considering he didn’t push much of a pace in that first round. In the second round he was battered with punches, knees and kicks from Silva, and even though he got a full body lock, was unable to do anything to get the fight to the ground besides pull guard. From there Silva simply took his back and choked him out. Henderson later blamed a bad weight cut for his performance, just as he would in a similar performance against Jake Shields. But then Henderson has crapped the bed and looked horrible in plenty of big fights before where he cut no weight, so who knows how much weight that argument holds.

While most fans think Silva is going to knock out Sonnen in style, I think his most likely path to victory is by submission. Unless Silva just runs away the whole night and decides to put on 25 minutes of interpretive dance like he did in Abu Dhabi, Sonnen is going to take him down repeatedly and keep him there. But Sonnen has been submitted 6 times in his career, and Silva has a pretty good guard. It’s a 25 minute fight, and it some point, one would assume he’d be able to catch Sonnen in something.

And here is where we get to Chael Sonnen’s chances in this fight. I think he has a very real chance to win this fight. Why? Because he’s going to force Anderson Silva to rely on the weakest part of his game. While Silva did lock up a nice triangle from the bottom on Travis Lutter and then force him to tap from elbow strikes, it’s Travis Lutter. This is a guy who was half dead from missing weight. Also, let’s not act like he was the hardest guy in the world to tap – he was Matt Lindland’s sloppy seconds at that point. Silva’s only other submission win (other than two fights early in his career where his opponents tapped out to punches) is his rear naked choke over Dan Henderson. I think it is highly unlikely that Chael Sonnen pulls guard like Dan Henderson did - if he does, he deserves to get submitted just like Henderson did, because it will be a death wish.

But keeping Silva on his back is a wise move for Sonnen. While Silva is dangerous there, and I think Silva could very well catch Sonnen with something, Silva doesn’t have some kind of world class guard. His defensive guard is actually quite porous and guys pass it often- Lutter advanced to mount on him almost instantly, and Henderson didn’t have much trouble getting to side control once he decided he wanted to be there. Silva is usually very content to just lay flat on his back and try to stall instead of trying to work his way back to his feet. That’s probably not the best idea against Sonnen, who he needs to be playing either an active, offensive guard against or actively trying to get back to his feet.

There’s also something to be said about how Sonnen is generally viewed, and how this effects a fighter’s mind when he is being dominated on the mat by Sonnen. Dan Miller went into his fight with Chael Sonnen thinking what all the fans thought- that Chael was easy tappings. When he couldn’t coax a tap out of Chael, he grew more and more frustrated as the fight went on, making it more and more easy for Chael to secure the victory. Yushin Okami flatly stated after his loss to Chael Sonnen that he was humiliated and embarrassed by him. He had totally expected to win that fight with relative ease, and when it didn’t happen it was a total shock to him. If you watch during the announcements for the Nate Marquardt vs Chael Sonnen fight, Marquardt and his corner are literally smirking and laughing the whole time. They thought Sonnen was just a tune up fight before going to a title fight with Anderson Silva. The look on Marquardt’s face after the fight said it all- "I just lost to THIS guy?"

One thing that keeps popping into my mind when I break this fight down is two fights that happened recently in Bellator - Ben Askren vs Dan Hornbuckle and Joe Warren vs Patricio "Pitbull" Freire. In both cases, I picked against the wrestlers in Askren and Warren – they both they both had the habit of being reckless in their opponent’s guards, and getting caught in lots of submissions. I thought the guys they were fighting were better offensive fighters, and that over the course of the fight that the one dimensional wrestler, with no clear way to finish the fight, would be caught and finished. And boy, was I wrong in both cases. Askren completely ground down Hornbuckle on the mat, got out of all of his submission attempts and just put a thorough beating on him in general. Joe Warren came back from being nearly finished in the first round to take down and stifle "Pitbull" in the second and third and win a decision. In both cases, the better offensive fighters in Hornbuckle and "Pitbull" were unable to get their games going due to the unrelenting pressure of Askren and Warren’s wrestling game.

And I think we could very well see the same thing on August 7th. Chael Sonnen could take down Anderson Silva in every round, shut down Anderson’s submission attempts, and just grind on him for 25 minutes. I think this is a much more realistic possibility than the majority of fans or media think it is. Much like Fedor vs Werdum, people are overlooking the obvious and sticking with the talking points. Could Anderson Silva knock out Chael Sonnen? Of course. Could Anderson Silva submit Chael Sonnen? If I was a gambling man I’d lay money on that being the likely outcome of the fight. But the chance of Chael Sonnen putting on the performance of his career against Anderson Silva, and cementing himself as the greatest middleweight in the world is a very, very real possibility that needs to be addressed. And as the #2 middleweight in the world, Chael Sonnen deserves more of a fair shake at this point in his career than "oh, he’s going to get knocked out."

Even if he is the most hated man in MMA.