After suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans last Saturday, Chael Sonnen has decided the division is not for him.
Instead he will drop back down to 185 pounds, where he fought four years for the UFC in eight matches, until his second loss against the champion Anderson Silva last July.
“I’ve always struggled at 205 to get used to the weight. I can do better than that, but I’m going to have to go back to 185,” Sonnen told the UFC post-fight show on Fox Sports (h/t MMA Weekly). “That’s where I can do my best work; I can scramble and not get held in these positions.”
Sonnen made much of his decision to move up to light heavyweight after two failed attempts to capture middleweight gold. At the time he said he was emulating his mentor Randy Couture, who had also switched divisions several times in his career after struggling at heavyweight.
However, Couture dropped down to a division much more suitable to his size, while Chael moved up to 205 pounds. The decision had mixed results. After talking himself into a championship fight with Jon Jones in April, he was mauled by the light heavyweight champ.
Things were looking up after he finished veteran Mauricio Rua in similarly dominant fashion in August. That fight had him move up to No. 6 in the UFC’s light heavyweight rankings in the days leading up to his encounter against Evans at UFC 167.
But Sonnen made up his mind to drop back down after receiving a beating from Evans, who finished him via TKO in less time than it took Jones. It’s the kind of beating that would have you looking for pawn shops online to earn some cash, because your day job clearly isn’t working.
In fact, the Oregon native was thinking of a return to 185 pounds soon after his win over Rua, a move that was complicated by his match against Evans as well as a forthcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter which will see him fight Wanderlei Silva in the finale.
That match was also originally scheduled to take place at 205 pounds.
“I’m going to get back to middleweight,” Sonnen said in an interview a week before UFC 167. “I’m going to get through the Wanderlei (Silva) fight and then I will be returning to middleweight.”
That season will film in Brazil, and there’s still no word on whether the two coaches will eventually face off as middleweights or light heavyweights.
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