Chael Sonnen may have been doing everything right down to plan. For all we MMA fans knew, he might have perfected that move after countless repetitions during his training leading to his UFC 148 middleweight title shot versus Anderson “The Spider” Silva .
And, after dominating another first round versus the pound-for-pound king Silva (his “first first” round was in the classic main event of UFC 117 almost two years ago), he may have believed that the time was right to unleash the strike that Shonie Carter utilized to finish Matt Serra in UFC 31 more than a decade past.
Early in the second round of their rematch two Saturday nights ago, away went Sonnen with a clockwise rotation beginning with the quick pivot of his lead left foot, then the twist of the hip and the lateral extension of his hind right arm with the clenched fist as his missile.
The fight video of the fancy move could have ended up immortalized in the executioner’s favor, if only it hit the intended target. Instead, it became an overzealous in-your-face slam dunk attempt that the ball bounced off the rim.
Next instance, Sonnen the Spinner bounced off the Octagon wall like a top slowing down to its last pirrouete, then dropped down to his butt, back propped against the fence.
Right there and then Sonnen’s face expressed a mix of weariness and fear of one who knew that it was the beginning of the end.
There he was sitting vulnerably supine and prone to downward projectiles from the dark tower looming above him.
It didn’t take long for the defending champion to respond with something straight to the point, unlike the circular and careless provocation of the challenger that hit nothing but air.
Proving that he was the better marksman, the champion’s knee flew straight like a well-aimed arrow and hit its bull’s-eye on Sonnen’s sternum.
Soon, Sonnen was crouched like a fetus in danger of getting aborted from Silva’s battering, until the merciful intervention of the third man.
So where did the idea of using that revolving “fragile little birdcage of bones”* against MMA’s most formidable striker come from?
Perhaps Sonnen was finishing sparring mates with it, and wanted to prove that unlike his mushy ground-and-pound, his spinning back-fist (surprise!) could actually stun and finish someone—including the Silva.
Or maybe Sonnen mistook Mikhail Baryshnikov for a Russian Combat Sambo master, and tested the latter’s famous maneuver that he saw on YouTube.
Well, unless Sonnen—or anyone more credible in his team—honestly and categorically confesses on its history, we’ll never really know.
*Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills’s description of a fist, from the fifth sentence of his essay “Muhammad Ali,” on page 331 of his book Lead Time: A Journalist’s Education (First Mariner Books edition 2004).
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