Chael Sonnen is like bad sci-fi movie; you spend hours thinking “is this really going on?” only to have the rug pulled out from underneath your feet in the final act when the film tells you “It was all in your head the entire time.”
So goes his appearance on MMA Live yesterday. During a recap of the main event of UFC 134, in which Anderson Silva made Yushin Okami (a.k.a the man Sonnen had stated Silva had been ducking ever since his “loss” to back in 2006) look like a child lost in a nightmare, Sonnen flipped the switch quicker than that batshit crazy dude in The Green Mile. Speaking of, did you know THAT’S the guy who gotten all that attention for marrying that 16 year old prostitute or whatever? All I’m saying is, the best actors often aren’t acting at all.
Anyway, Sonnen had this to say about Anderson’s performance:
“The bottom line is that Anderson Silva did an awesome job. He continues with his dominance, he’s such a good striker and what he’s really good at is keeping guys at range and having guys fight his fight.”
Sonnen goes on to say that Okami simply didn’t follow the strategy, which can’t really be denied in this case, but then suggests that Okami possibly had the flu, resulting in him coming in a couple pounds underweight.
The key to defeating Silva, according to Sonnen, lies almost entirely in the mental:
“…people just aren’t getting over the mental side of it…it becomes very apparent when you stand around and watch Anderson in front of you. If you look at Vitor Belfort’s mouth, it was almost open and he was in awe right before the finishing strike. If you look at Yushin’s face, he’s almost in awe and wondering what’s coming next before the finishing strikes come.”
If one thing can be said about Chael Sonnen, it’s definitely that he isn’t in awe before the finish comes, but moreso after he realizes it was via triangle again. And that my friends, is the definition of irony.
-Danga