Back at UFC 117, Chael Sonnen came within two agonizing minutes of pulling off the seemingly impossible: beating Anderson Silva. It just wasn’t to be on that fateful night in the summer of 2010. On June 23, however, Sonnen will get a second chance.
In that bout, Sonnen repeatedly took Silva down and put enough of a beating on him to keep the fight in his domain. But at the 3:10 mark of the fifth round, Chael pulled a classic Sonnenism and succumbed to a dramatic triangle choke. It was the eighth submission loss of his career.
Even with such a crushing defeat, though, Sonnen had achieved a feat no other man has in the Octagon: he showed that Anderson Silva is human; he bleeds red and puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us, and it’s possible he can be beaten.
The question on everyone’s mind is the same: Can Sonnen Xerox his last performance (at least the first 22 minutes of it) without falling victim to the submission threat that has plagued his entire career?
Sonnen has only one path to victory against Silva: relentless takedowns and enough activity to keep the fight on the mat, the same blueprint he used in their first fight.
Silva is too devastating a striker for Sonnen to survive in the stand-up realm for very long. He simply must take Silva down at the beginning of every round and keep him there.
But that leaves him susceptible to Silva’s submissions, which are some of the finest in the sport. Five rounds is a long time to fend off submissions when you have been as historically atrocious at defending them as Sonnen has.
Not to mention the fact that Chael was suspended after their fight for having four times the allowable testosterone/epitestosterone ratio for athletes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a performance enhancer, and whether it helped Sonnen is a futile debate.
The urinalysis confirmed it was in his system, and that fact alone leaves a gigantic question mark lingering over his awesome performance.
It can be argued that a fighter with a legitimate testosterone deficiency who uses medically prescribed testosterone replacement therapy under the close supervision of a doctor is simply evening the playing field, but four times the allowable limit can be seen as nothing other than trying to gain an unfair advantage, or to put it more bluntly, cheating. Even with that advantage, Chael couldn’t get the job done.
Anderson Silva is a killer possessing the most varied offensive arsenal the sport has ever seen. Once he calibrates the distance from his fists to his opponent’s chin and those hands start spinning, it’s usually just a matter of time.
Bizarre decision wins against Patrick Cote, Thales Leites, and Demian Maia aside, Silva has finished every one of his 11 other opponents in the UFC. That’s a staggering feat.
Other phenomenal fighters, such as Georges St. Pierre, are given a pass for failing to finish at the top level, while Silva has consistently finished the best the sport has to offer.
Sonnen, on the other hand, is not a killer. Of his six wins in the UFC, only one has ended before the final buzzer: a dominating submission win over Brian Stann. Chael is more a grinder; a point fighter.
A title fight is 25 minutes. Sonnen will likely be able to plant Silva on his back on most of his takedown attempts, and he’s active enough to stay in dominant position, but he does little damage, and must win a decision.
Sonnen needs every second of those 25 minutes to win. Silva needs but a nanosecond. Chael had his chance back at UFC 117 when he was oozing with testosterone and fought a nearly perfect fight.
Too many things have to go right for him to win, while too many things have to go wrong for Silva to lose. The odds simply do not favor a Sonnen victory.
The stars have to be perfectly aligned. The moon has to be in a harmonious two-step with the seas. And the gods of submission defense would have to be feeling mighty charitable for Chael Sonnen to pull this off.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com