UFC president Dana White has already said he’d be crazy not to sign middleweight champion Anderson Silva against Chael Sonnen in a rematch of their August 2010 classic, but that’s apparently not enough to pacify Sonnen.
The contender ratcheted up his campaign for another chance at Silva on Tuesday’s edition of the nationally syndicated Jim Rome Show, admitting he was trying to pick a fight with what he believes to be an unwilling participant.
“[Silva] tells Dana he wants the biggest fight,” Sonnen said. “Well this is the biggest fight he can have and I’ve never heard my name come out of his mouth once.”
Sonnen discussed his UFC 136 post-fight challenge, in which he told Silva that if he lost, he would leave the promotion, saying that he was still willing to answer to the stipulation, but that “like any offer, it’ll expire sometime.”
At the time of the offer, Silva was in the crowd but simply smiled before pretending to cower in fear. Since then, Silva’s manager Ed Soares told a Brazilian news program that while Sonnen is a great fighter, he had his chance, lost and should “go back to the end of the line.” Rome asked Sonnen how he would have responded if he were on the receiving end of the offer.
“I would have come over the guardrail, walked up the steps, gone into the octagon, taken the microphone out of his hands and shoved it straight down his throat,” he said.
Sonnen reiterated the claim that he was the rightful winner of their UFC 117 fight, during which he dominated the first four-and-a-half rounds before losing via tapout. Rome challenged him on that, reminding him that he tapped out due to submission. Sonnen didn’t necessarily agree.
“Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes,” he said. “I’m here to tell you under any other scoring system in the world, I won that fight. I hit him 300 times, he hit me 11 times. Look, if the rolls had been reversed and he hit me 30 unanswered times, they would have pulled him off me, declared him the winner and sent him on his way. I not only hit him 30 unanswered times, I did it at 10 different points of the fight.”
As Rome playfully pressed the point, Sonnen acknowledged the fight’s final outcome but said he was the man to unseat Silva. Past that, he said that if Silva is angered by some of the things he has said — including a recent comment that many believe crossed the line by referencing Silva’s wife — this is his chance to shut him up.
“As far as the line, I don’t care,” he said. “People say it’s not personal. Well, it is personal. But he has a problem and what does he do? He calls Dana and tattles about it. Guess what? Let’s get into the octagon, the people’s forum and I’ll answer for everything I’ve ever said.”
Sonnen went on to call Silva “a paper champion, overpaid and overrated,” before adding some new material to his Silva diatribe. After saying he would slap Silva in the face the next time he saw him, he added this gem: “I was going to dump a Coke on him one time. He was right next to me, and if I thought he was worth the buck-fifty I spent on the Coke, I would’ve done it.”
Rome, who is known to generate headline-grabbing interviews from his subjects, apparently left the conversation in awe of Sonnen’s fight-selling skills, calling him one of the five best guests he’s had on the show, and describing any future Sonnen interviews as “appointment listening.”
With Sonnen getting national mainstream press, it’s even more likely that Sonnen-Silva II is in our near future.
(Editor’s note: Listen to Sonnen’s appearance on Jim Rome Show below.)