mma / News

Chael Sonnen Says Fedor Won’t Be Able To Compete In The UFC

September 14, 2015 | Posted by Larry Csonka

– Chael Sonnen recently appeared on Submission Radio, here are thehighlights…

Does Fedor Have a Chance Against Top UFC Heavyweights: “No, Fedor is terrible. And Fedor is a very nice guy. I had the pleasure to meet him twice. The first time, I was in line with him at a Starbucks in a hotel in Los Angeles, and he just blended in. He was just a chubby bald guy, with a nerdy sweater, waiting for his latte like everybody else. And I thought, what a nice guy. The reality on Fedor is, if you’re not fighting in a commissioned fight, you’re not fighting in a real fight. It has to be a sanctioned commission fight. This comes right back what we were talking about with Holly and her quadrillion boxing championships. If there’s no sanctioning and there’s no credibility and architecture, it doesn’t count. So everything he did in Japan with a referee wearing an earpiece gets thrown out. You gotta come to the States where there’s an official weigh-in, where there’s a regulatory body, and where there’s clearer defined rules, with clearer defined judging. He did that. He did that six times and he went 3-3. That’s not exactly an impressive record for a guy that we all keep having to hear is ‘the best of all time’. Now God bless him, I love a guy that can come back, but I can tell you first hand, you don’t get better not doing something. Fedor got destroyed by guys who are now getting destroyed. Fedor got destroyed by Bigfoot Silva, who by my last count has fought – I believe Frank Mir knocked him out in 18 seconds, I suppose I’d have to re-watch that – but the point is that it’s ridiculous. I think it will sell once. I know that I’ll tune in, I know that the UFC is going to greatly overpay for him, and good for Fedor, man. I think he did everything right, and he is a nice guy. You know, this isn’t my goal to come out and bash a guy, but look, if a guy’s terrible a guy’s terrible. He’s 3-3 in the States, that means he’s 3-3.”

On Holly Holm’s Boxing Accolades: “It’s the only thing that’s holding her back. You need the mandate of a few people. You need the mandate of the bosses, the guys on the second floor at the UFC, you need the mandate of the fans, but you also need the support of the people in the locker-room. You know, the fellow fighters kind of have to step aside for somebody to be the number one contender and go ‘okay yeah, you’re the right person’. Holly is gaining some fan support, and as far as the locker-room goes, we can’t get behind her ’cause she’s not telling the truth, that there is no validity that I’m willing to sign off on – and I’m happy for someone to come in and disagree with me, tell me where I’m wrong. But there is no validity to any of her world championships, let alone some ridiculous claim of being a seventeen-time world champion. I mean guys, I can go open the door to my garage right now, invite all comers, and then put a belt around whoever wins and call it the ‘world championship’. And I mean that kind of stuff happens all the time. You see it in arm wrestling. There’s a world championship for some game called ‘cornholing’, which is like some Midwest version of horseshoes. There’s world championships for thumb wrestling, and there’s no validity to this stuff. There’s no validity to her being a seventeen-time world champion, and I don’t believe as an analyst that there’s any validity to any, zero of her championships. I don’t know one tournament that she ever entered where the entire planet was welcome to enter, and they whittled it down with a competitive architecture known as a bracket, and one person was left standing. I don’t know of it. And I’ve been making this claim for a while, wanting somebody to disagree with me, wanting Holly to disagree with me or one of her coaches to come out and go, ‘Chael you don’t know what you’re talking about’. It’s never happened. She’s got the thumb-wrestling world championship from some dude’s garage. That’s just the reality. I do think she’s a skilled fighter, I think she’s a good boxer. I don’t know if that matters. I’m 38 years old, I’ve never met a female boxer. Not one. I’ve travelled the world, I’ve seen damn near every continent in every country, I’ve been in every state in America, I’ve never reached across a table and shaken hands with a women that turned out she was a boxer. So are you the best boxer in the world for females? Maybe? Does that mean you beat about three people? Yeah it does. And I’m not discrediting her, I’m discrediting boxing. Boxing is a dying breed, man. People ask me this about Floyd Mayweather all the time. Is he the greatest boxer ever? He’s certainly the best of this time, and he’s certainly a fantastic athlete and he should get a lot more credit than he does, but nobody boxes, guys. The same way I said I’ve never met a girl that boxes. I was 28 years old when I met my first boxer. Clayton Hires was the first man I’ve ever met who had been in the ring and competed in boxing, not one of these liars that goes down to the gym and jumps rope for three minutes and then goes and gets some water. I’m talking about a guy that gets in the ring on a Saturday night and boxes another man. I was 28 years old when I met my first one of those. The sport doesn’t exist. So who cares if you’re the best at it.”