UFC Sanchez vs Stevenson. Paulo Filho. WEC Faber vs. Bryan Baker. WEC Marshall vs. Jeremy Horn. UFC Hughes vs Gracie. Trevor Prangley. UFC Fight Night 4.
Renato Sobral. UFC Fury. Alex Stiebling. WEC Halloween Fury 3. Forrest Griffin. IFC - Global Domination. Chael Sonnen Record: Height: 6' 1" Weight: lbs. Career statistics: SLpM: 3. Click on row to see detailed stats. Chael Sonnen Rashad Evans. Chael Sonnen Mauricio Rua. SUB Guillotine Choke. Chael Sonnen Jon Jones. Hitting nothing but air, he went flying into the cage and onto his backside.
After months of bad blood, heated words and angry exchanges, MMA 's top feud came to an explosive end. It was Silva who made the first move toward reconciliation, draping his arm around his fallen foe and encouraging the rabid Brazilian fans to applaud the man they were moments earlier verbally lynching.
Sonnen took his loss like a real man. He didn't make excuses, although he certainly could have, instead choosing to acknowledge Silva's greatness.
The better guy won tonight. It was more than just the win that made Silva's fans sing out into the night—it was the manner in which he won. Silva's haymakers left Chael curled up on the mat, nearly fetal. For a Sonnen fan like me, it was bittersweet. As an MMA historian, I love to watch a fighter like Silva, a man who will undoubtedly go down in the history books as the top fighter of the era.
Seeing him vanquish his most fearsome foe, a fighter who taunted him for years, is the kind of moment a writer dreams about. As a person who has spent a little time with Chael, however, it was a crushing loss.
Especially the way it happened. In the first round, we saw what might have been a five-minute block pulled out of their first fight. Sonnen took him down immediately and went to work, eventually landing in the mount.
It was the definition of positional dominance. You could see why Chael's trainers were so excited for a potential ground-fighting exchange with Silva. This time, Sonnen was ready both to defend and apply submissions. Silva, it seemed, had no answer for Sonnen's wrestling. Because in the second round, he discovered a work-around.
Improbably, Sonnen kept fans mesmerized, minute by minute, round after round, with near-flawless execution. If you were watching on Pay-per-View, you could definitely feel the magic and largesse of what you were watching. If you were privileged enough to be inside Oracle Arena it was a gripping and profound experience.
How exhilarating was it? Consider this: I was watching the fight near a tunnel and then I felt this massive shove on my right shoulder that threw me forward a foot or so — mosh pit behavior. Albert is a very talented cameraman and video editor who had worked for a major television news station, which is why Zuffa hired him. But this Fight for the Ages had touched a chord inside of this politico and he was instantly and uncontrollably smitten. He was under the spell of disbelief and on the edge of his seat just like the rest of us.
But even pinned under an avalanche of adversity, when most would have folded or broken in spirit, Silva impressed with his toughness, will to win and grace under pressure. It was Sonnen, not Silva, who was a bloody mess with gashes on the bridge of his nose and both eyes and a huge welt on his right cheek bone. Twenty seconds into the fifth round one fighter dropped to his rump following a punch. To our amazement, it was Silva who had been stunned for a second time in the fight.
The seconds on the clock whittled away and the suspense continued to rise. Two minutes away from completing arguably the greatest upset in UFC history. Two minutes away from clinching a career-defining victory that would expel the ghosts of past defeats and let him bask in the most glorious moment of a year, roller-coaster existence in MMA. One arm in, one arm out. It all seemed so surreal.
In a span of less than 15 seconds, a triangle choke to armbar transition instantly erased four and a half rounds of Sonnen domination. All of those dreams that were right there for the taking instantly vanished. And Sonnen undoubtedly respected and prepared for this danger. He probably practiced defending against triangle chokes and armbars hundreds of times in practice. Over and over again. There was no mystery there, so every time Silva tried to set up a triangle in the early rounds with wrist and head control, Sonnen showed adequate awareness and stuffed the move before it developed.
With two minutes left in the fight, and the desperate champion planted on his back and unable to return to his feet, what could Silva possibly do to pull a rabbit out of a hat?
I would have bet the house that he would be hunting for a triangle choke. Sonnen had to have known it, too, though he later admitted he had no idea how much time was actually left on the clock. Dating back to and all the way up to the present, Sonnen has been submitted six times by either an armbar or triangle choke. That is a startling number of times for such a formidable, veteran fighter to fall victim to the same archtype of Brazilian jiu-jitsu moves — especially when one considers that Sonnen turned pro in and has been training submission wrestling and jiu-jitsu for most of that time.
Couture tapped to an Enson Inoue armbar in and a kimura in and has never been tapped out since in a live MMA fight. For several years now I have regarded Sonnen as one of the top 5 interviews in MMA because of his extraordinary candor, wit and professionalism.
Please, spare me.
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