Ed Soares is one of the best managers in the game. It’s easy to see. Just look at the roster of fighters he currently manages: Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, the Nogueira Brothers. And take a look at the fighters he’s managed in the past before they moved on to allegedly greener pastures: Jose Aldo, Junior dos Santos and more. Most of those names are current or former UFC champions.
Despite his deft managerial skills, Soares has been the butt of plenty of jokes from Chael Sonnen. That’s nothing new. Sonnen has taken verbal shots at just about every Brazilian in the game. It’s part of Sonnen’s game, and I think Soares understands that.
Behind the scenes, the relationship between Sonnen and Soares is much more cordial than you’d think. But that hasn’t stopped Soares from firing back at Sonnen in a public setting:
Hopefully people will understand that they shouldn’t do anything against Chael, just boo him. Let Anderson settle this with him in the Octagon. It will be very bad for Brazil if something were to happen to him. The guy is an idiot, but he is promoting the fight and it will be the greatest MMA fight of all time.
I’d like to point out one of the more prescient things Soares said: “He is promoting the fight.” That’s an important aspect to consider here. Soares understands the fight game better than just about anyone else, and he knows that you’ve gotta do things outside the box if you want to hype a fight and create interest in pay-per-view main events.
Those of you have seen the excellent Anderson Silva documentary “Like Water” will remember the scene where Soares listens to Sonnen on a conference call, shaking his head at the ludicrous things the middleweight came up with during his hype job for the first fight with Silva. Soares laughed along with the rest of us.
But in the same movie, Soares shook his head at Silva’s terse one-word responses to media questions regarding the fight. Silva wasn’t playing the game, and that could have a major effect on the pay-per-view buyrate of the show. Affecting the buyrate meant that Silva’s final purse was also being affected, because he’s paid a percentage of revenue from each of those PPV purchases.
“I don’t know if he doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care,” Soares said.
Soares is right. Silva’s never played the game. He seems to have little to no interest in building up the rivalry for public consumption, and that hurts him as a drawing card. It’s the one thing he’s missing from his legendary resume; he’s the best fighter in the world, but his nonchalant attitude towards hyping fights means there’s ultimately less interest in seeing him fight, at least from the perspective of the mainstream audience.
I’m not saying Silva needs to go into pro-wrestler mode. Sonnen is handling that well enough on his own, and we probably don’t need two guys doing the same thing. But Silva needs to start acknowledging that Sonnen has gotten under his skin and he wants to make him pay. If that’s not the case, he can still pretend.
Silva won’t do it, though. For whatever reason, he’s decided he’s not going to play the game. Thank God he’s got Ed Soares in his corner to do it for him.
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