Shortly after his heartbreaking loss to Anderson Silva via fifth-round submission, a dejected Chael Sonnen sat down at the post-fight press conference and made a simple proclamation to everyone who was eager to chalk the loss up to a lucky finish for the champ: “The better man always wins.”
At the time, it seemed like a magnanimous statement from the walking insult generator. Even though he won 22 minutes of the 23-minute fight, and even though he’d taken all four rounds on every judge’s scorecard, it didn’t matter in Sonnen’s eyes. Silva won, and that’s the only metric that matters when it comes to determining who the superior fighter is. So he said.
But as much as we hear about how anything can happen in MMA, how the four-ounce gloves are known to conjure a certain type of magic in the cage, aren’t there times when you just get lucky and win one you shouldn’t? Does the better man really always win?