(“And you made sure my nose looks like a big-ass clove of garlic? Okay, perfect.”)
We weren’t expecting much trash-talk in the lead-up to UFC 134‘s middleweight championship headliner between Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami — but the Spider continues to be the aggressor in the pre-fight war of words. This weekend, Silva gave an interview to Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, and expressed disappointment at Okami’s association with longtime training partner Chael Sonnen:
“You have to find the best person to train you, and I think he chose wrong…I will never line up with a loser, a loser in every sense. [Sonnen] did not win the fight (against me), (he) was caught doping, is being sued for various things, and is suspended from the UFC…Want to be a champion? (Be) allied with good people.”
In Okami’s defense, he started working with Sonnen long before Chael’s life imploded, and Team Quest was just one stop on Okami’s globe-trotting training tour. Plus, “good people” is a subjective phrase, isn’t it? I mean, other people might consider this guy to be a douchebag.
As you may recall, Silva spoke out last month about his first meeting with Okami — the 2006 Rumble on the Rock bout that famously ended with a DQ-via-illegal-upkick — claiming that Okami could have continued fighting, but basically puss’d out in order to pick up an easy victory. It seems like Silva is slowly working himself up into a one-sided rivalry with Okami. Whether that will lead to a better or worse performance from the champ…well, that’s always a mystery.