Chael Sonnen doesn’t just incite fellow fighters to try and punch him in the face.
Last week at an event in Las Vegas, the UFC star was nearly struck by an out-of-control fan in the stands, UFC president Dana White said Thursday. A male spectator from Brazil called Sonnen over at Mandalay Bay Events Center during The Ultimate Fighter 17 Finale and took a swing at him.
The man got “bundled up and dragged up every stair” by security, according to White.
“It was very quick, like those things typically happen,” Sonnen told MMAjunkie.com. “I was visiting with some fans, and a gentleman had started in on me. Ultimately, that’s what it led to. I think a fan can do anything they want. I think they can heckle, a fan can boo, but they can’t touch you. But the same thing goes for me. I can yell at a fan too, but you can’t touch them. If you want to be a fan, you buy the ticket, and you can have any energy you want, whether it’s positive or negative. And in this case it was negative, and he went a little too far.”
Sonnen became a villain to Brazilians in the lead up to his two fights with UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva. Sonnen is the biggest trash talker in MMA and ripped Silva – and his country – repeatedly in interviews leading up to those two fights, the last one in July 2012. He said he wouldn’t have fought back if the fan had landed the punch.
“We only compete in highly regulated and sanctioned matches,” he said. “I’m not a fan of that, but if he would have connected, I would have turned the other cheek and walked away. I certainly wouldn’t have engaged him. The guy seemed like a perfectly nice guy. He was an Anderson Silva fan. He was backing Anderson Silva verbally. For it to turn physical, yes, that was a surprise. But until that point, he just seemed like a guy with a passion for his favorite fighter.”
Sonnen has turned on the smack talk for his light heavyweight title fight against Jon Jones on April 27 at Prudential Center in Newark. He has blasted Jones for his 2012 DWI and called him a spoiled brat. When Jones turned down a fight with Sonnen on short notice in September, Sonnen named a menu item at his Oregon pizzeria after him – it had chicken and lots of cheese and came with a six-pack of beer.
Sonnen told MMAjunkie.com that plenty of fans have yelled things in his direction, but no one has ever gotten physical with him until last week.
“It was really quite interesting,” Sonnen said. “He was caught literally a quarter-second before it would have landed. I barely saw it coming in before a gentleman named Kaya stepped in and caught it.”
Ball is in GSP’s court: Dana White hasn’t closed the door yet on an Anderson Silva-Georges St-Pierre champion vs. champion superfight. In fact, he’s going to give St-Pierre the option.
“Maybe he wants to fight Anderson if Anderson wins [in July],” White said Thursday.
White named Johny Hendricks as the No. 1 contender to St-Pierre’s title after Hendricks defeated Carlos Condit last month. Obviously, though, Silva-St-Pierre is a much more lucrative fight for the UFC. Silva defends his middleweight title against Long Island’s Chris Weidman on July 6 at UFC 162 in Las Vegas.
“If Georges says to me, ‘I want to fight Anderson Silva,’ you think I’m going to go, ‘No you’re not – you’re fighting Johny Hendricks. We’ll talk about that later’?” White asked.
White initially wanted St-Pierre to fight Silva in May, but St-Pierre asked instead to oppose Nick Diaz, whom he beat last month by dominant decision. Silva and St-Pierre are the two longest standing champions in the UFC.
Boston bomber has MMA connection: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the men responsible for the horrific bombings of the Boston Marathon on Monday, has ties to the Boston MMA scene and might have once been a member of the city’s renowned Wai Kru gym.
MMAFighting.com’s Mike Chiappetta tweeted that Tsarnaev was not a current member of the gym, which has produced UFC alum John Howard and lightweight prospect Calvin Kattar, but could have been once and sparred there occassionally.
Tsarnaev, 26, was an accomplished boxer who won the the New England Golden Gloves heavyweight title in 2010, according to Deadspin. He was killed in a police shootout early Friday morning.
His younger brother and co-conspirator, Dzhokhar, was able to escape police and is still on the loose. He, too, has combat sports ties, wrestling in high school. Both are natives of Chechnya, a region of Russia.
Quick jabs: Bellator signed UFC veteran Vladimir Matyushenko to a contract this week. He’s expected to compete this summer in a non-tournament bout, but don’t be shocked to see “The Janitor” in the fall’s season nine light heavyweight tournament if there is one. … Jon Jones’ official Nike shoe was released to the public Friday. … UFC veterans Phil Baroni and Kamal Sholorus were added to the ONE FC: Rise to Power card May 31 in the Philippines.
