Chael Sonnen Thinks Floyd Mayweather Hurt His Brand With Rizin Incident

As we previously reported, Floyd Mayweather backed out of a fight for Rizin FF 14 with Tenshin Nasukawa, claiming he never agreed to a public fight. He was mocked by 50 Cent and now Chael Sonnen has jumped in with his own criticism. In the latest episode of Ariel and the Bad Guy (via MMA Fighting), Sonnen said that he believes that Mayweather hurt his brand over the entire incident. Here are highlights:

On Mayweather hurting his brand: “Huge miss here by Floyd Mayweather. He has brought down his brand. Very normal trajectory of a fighter’s career: you start out fighting at the YMCA, you move on to the dog park, you get into a coliseum, on your way out you go back to the YMCA, and then you finish up at the dog park. That is what this appeared to be for Floyd from jump street.”

On Mayweather’s finances: “The only thing more embellished than Floyd Mayweather’s pay-per-view buys is Floyd Mayweather’s net worth. But his spending habits are real. We know he has to fight again but the fact that he would go and offer his services in a stunt fight over in Japan under “yet to be specified rules,” this is very bad for the brand. And for him to try to unwind that and the come back to America. Look, it’s tough and Floyd stubbed his toe on this one.”

On how Mayweather miscalculated his return: “It was a tremendous mistake. The retirement just so you can use that to market the comeback. You can never have the comeback if you don’t have the retirement. Floyd knows this, Floyd tries to copy this, but Ariel, the one miss that he had, the ingredient that has to be there if you’re going to pull a stunt like this . . . it has to be at a time when people all come out saying, ‘Why?! Why would you retire? You’re so good! You have more left!’ When you retire at a time when people are looking at you going, ‘You should retire,’ you can’t get that feel, you can’t get that buzz back. This is what happened to Floyd. When Floyd went in there and boxed Conor, what was happening was the greatest of a generation took on an amateur, and when it took 30 minutes to get the amateur out of there, it was easier for the boxing world to go, ‘well yeah, but he was retired anyway.’”