Chael Sonnen doesn’t plan on hanging up the gloves just yet—not until he’s at least had an opportunity to settle things with Wanderlei Silva.
Retirement talks loomed following Sonnen‘s disappointing loss to light heavyweight champ Jon Jones at UFC 159 on Saturday night. As a perennial UFC contender, Sonnen is caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no longer a clear path to a UFC title shot.
He has already been defeated by middleweight champ Anderson Silva twice, which makes dropping back down to 185-pounds meaningless, and it isn’t like fans are clamoring for a rematch with Jones after a dominant first round TKO stoppage.
With no title left to fight for, many assumed Sonnen would ride off into the sunset and enjoy the fruit of his labors.
During an appearance on FUEL TV’s UFC Tonight, Sonnen announced he would continue to compete in whatever interesting bouts the UFC throws his way:
I will definitely continue [fighting] and at 205-pounds, unless they come up with a catch weight. They have a couple of guys they let do that. I know Rich Franklin has fought at catch weight a bunch. It’s very rare that you do that, but I’m not going to be in contendership any time soon and neither is Rich Franklin or a pool of other guys…I have a lot of goals I want to achieve still, and retirement won’t help me get that done.
One of those goals is taking out former Pride middleweight champ Wanderlei Silva.
The beef between Sonnen and Silva has been ongoing for nearly three years. All of the animosity between the two stems from a heated exchange on a bus in Texas back in September 2010 during promotional work for UFC Fight Night 22.
Silva was deeply offended by some of the things Sonnen said about Brazil and the Nogueira brothers leading up to the UFC 117 title bout with Anderson. During the ride, Silva made it a point to call Sonnen out for being disrespectful in light of a promotional campaign.
He understood Sonnen‘s value in promoting fights, but as a Brazilian, he warned the Oregon native that respect is the only way to ensure “you don’t lose your teeth.”
When asked to explain his passive reaction, Sonnen admitted he could barely make out what Silva was saying during the encounter. He even went on to ridicule the legend for posting a video of the incident on YouTube in hopes of making it bigger than it needed to be:
I’m not going anywhere until me and Wanderlei straighten this thing out once and for all…Wanderlei pulled a real dirt bag move on me one time. We’re in a van together, he mutters something at me and I can’t understand what he’s saying. He then puts it on YouTube with subtitles because he knows I can’t understand so he puts it in these subtitles.
I don’t know if that’s what he said or not, but essentially, he tells me off, and it looks as though I’m conceding to him, which if you’re a fighter, that doesn’t fly. If a guy calls you out, it doesn’t matter if it’s in a van or not you must respond to him. I’m ready to respond Wanderlei.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com