If you really think Chael Sonnen is going for the gusto with Anderson Silva, you probably have not heard much of Nick Diaz.
That’s right, I said it.
Going for the gusto—in between fairly comprehensible interviews that make people think he wants out of MMA when he’s actually seen as one of the elite in the sport—is what Diaz does.
He finds things about certain guys he has a beef with, and he sets it off from there by finding ways of proclaiming that they aren’t who or what they claim to be.
He didn’t do it against Hayato Sakurai or B.J. Penn because he respects them, which is fine because Sonnen doesn’t care to trash guys like Yushin Okami or Brian Stann or the like when all they’re saying is that they’re going to beat Sonnen.
However, what has Sonnen really said to Silva?
He wants to slap Silva’s wife on the butt, he thinks Silva sucks, he doesn’t understand how Silva could get beaten up for five rounds and win a fight based on what he did in eight seconds of the last round, he wants to beat up Vitor Belfort—who Silva kicked in the face on Super Bowl Weekend in 2011—and he believes Silva is a phony that Ed Soares was protecting.
There are other things that he’s said in the past regarding Silva, from downplaying his black belt and his fan base to calling the UFC middleweight title “12 pounds of tin”, but if anything, it’s Silva that’s played Sonnen.
He’s shaken Sonnen up by not really responding to him and he’s viewed Michael Bisping—of all dudes, the TUF 14 Finale headliner that got knocked out by a man who tapped out to Silva in Round 2—as a more credible challenge.
Sonnen could challenge the image of Silva, he could challenge the record of guys Silva has fought, he could yell, “Where you at, motherf**ker?” in a camera before being announced the winner of his fight, and he could piss Silva off royally by claiming that Silva is faking a shoulder injury in order to avoid the rematch, but instead, he tells Silva what Silva critics could say in 15 seconds and he goes the WWE-PG route in order to goad Silva into the rematch.
Now, if Sonnen had done it original ECW style and challenged Silva to a Barbed Wire Match in the cage—with barbed wire around the gloves, if possible—or a Taipei Cage Fight, where both fighters’ wraps were dipped in glue and covered in shards of broken glass before they stepped in the Octagon for the title fight, then I would be nice to Uncle Chael.
In any case, I digress…
Diaz is known for causing some controversies one day at a time, and the fighter fans love to hate outside of the cage has gotten all the way underneath the skin of the GSP fan base with his actions and his behavior.
Calling one of the best fighters in the sport right now a faker while he’s injured? No wonder GSP got pissed.
One of the most dominant members of MMA’s pound-for-pound ranks goes up against the man some might consider in time to be the best pound-for-pound fighter—emphasis on “fighter”—on the planet, and it’s all because Diaz dared to say that St-Pierre was scared, homie.
Sonnen should consider something similar to what Diaz is done if he wants us to take him seriously as a guy that can do in Silva again, win the fight, and test clean afterwards.
Now, I’m not saying Sonnen should start a brawl or flip off Silva through a YouTube video or tell Ariel Helwani that people get slapped in West Linn if a guy like Helwani conducts himself the way he does, but if he wants to not get dethroned by the baddest boy in MMA since Tito Ortiz as far as being the best trash-talker in the sport, he’s going to have to steal a page or two from Diaz’s playbook.
If he can do so without getting into more money laundering issues or more failed drug tests for abusing his TRT, then maybe we can dial back on Diaz’s claim toward being the baddest dude in MMA now.
So, come on, Chael—if you want Silva that badly, don’t be scared, homie!
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