Chael Sonnen got pulled from UFC 175 because he pissed hot in a random drug test. It gets funny, here. Chael's initial opponent, Wanderlei Silva, was pulled from the event because he left town rather than give a piss test - and then Chael publicly mocked Silva's flight, calling him a cheating drug user. Funny stuff.
It comes from comedy into farce because this isn't the first time Sonnen has failed a drug test. After Sonnen's first loss to Anderson Silva, Sonnen was popped in a drug test and suspended by the California State Athletic Commission. The hearings were a riot as Sonnen claimed to have never gone through puberty, you had the quack doctor, crocodile tears, you name it - it was like a soap opera.
The big lie he told, though, was that he told the Nevada State Athletic Commission that he was using testosterone replacement. He never told them that - or at least he was never able to produce any documents saying he did, and the then director of the NSAC testified that Sonnen has never gotten any medical use exemptions for testosterone replacement.
Around the same time, he got a suspended sentence for real estate fraud - he was taking kickbacks. The guy is a real charmer. A real honest character.
In a spiral of weirdness, UFC president Dana White condemned both Sonnen and the NSAC. Sonnen for breaking the rules but the majority of his hectoring was over the NSAC providing no guidelines for athletes coming off of testosterone replacement that had been approved in previous years.
I'm sure that one baffles the NSAC because there is a standard in place for that kind of thing - you don't apply for a license to fight until you're clean. Lots of people use lots of drugs that are forbidden in the context of an athletic contest. Painkillers given to soothe an injury are illegal to use in competition - so you don't apply to fight until that stuff is out of your system. AND you report your use of it to the commission when the time comes, which Sonnen also failed to do.
Unlike many other athletes who are two time drug cheats, Sonnen will not be fired from the UFC. Dana White likes the guy too much, and he's a big draw, as well. Somehow, after losing a title shot to Anderson Silva - again - he managed to talk his way into a championship fight at higher weight class! Dana White said he was sending a message to the people who said they needed a full training camp to fight Jon Jones, the best mixed martial artist now fighting . . . even though Dan Henderson, who was a legitimate contender, was trying to book the fight.
Chael Sonnen is a real life lesson, though. The message is clear - if you're a good-looking white Republican man, you can lie, cheat and steal and be rewarded for it.
Showing posts with label chael sonnen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chael sonnen. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Monday, July 8, 2013
Anderson Silva did not fight most of the best middleweights
As part of my series about burying Anderson Silva, I think it is important to realize that Silva didn't fight many of the best middleweights in the world, because arrogance kept them up at light heavyweight.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Facile reporting interpretations of Silva vs. Weidman
I also find it very interesting how superficial the fight analysis is - no one is really saying that Silva put his hands down for a reason, to help him sprawl out against Weidman's shot. When Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down. When Silva had his hands down, he was able to sprawl out from the shot. It's the dilemma that a striker fights a grappler. If a striker unloads on the grappler, they've basically got one chance to win - a "puncher's chance". Alternately, they can try to develop a strategy to stop the takedown from happening. Silva did something he'd done before, something he did against Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin. Put your hands down to push against the shoulders of a wrestler coming in for the shoot while trying to goad them into a fist fight.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
MMA Live with Chael Sonnen . . .
. . . made me realize Sonnen's an idiot and loser scum. The first sign was that his jacket didn't fit him. He has, apparently, gained some weight over the holiday season, shall we say, and didn't buy a new jacket. Normally, I don't notice (or care) about that kind of thing, but this is national television. Still, okay, that's not it.
The next bit was when he called San Luis Obispo "San Louis Obiscopo". I was, "Dude, really?" It was embarrassing.
But the big this is that I don't like it when my intelligence is insulted. After losing to Anderson Silva, Sonnen's piss test came back hot. He got caught taking steroids. At an appeals hearing, he said he pissed hot because he was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy and he claimed that he told some doctor that he was undergoing TRT . . .
Well, no. Like everywhere, California has laws concerning professional sports. There is a specific form that an athlete has to disclose by a specific date that includes all drugs that they're taking. This is, indeed, part of any urine analysis. They need to know what's in your body that might effect the drug screenings. On that form, the only form that counts in this regard, Sonnen was not forthcoming. And as with all things legal, ignorance is not an excuse. It doesn't matter if Sonnen thought he'd fulfilled his obligations by telling a doctor on the California State Athletic Commission. What matters is the form. Hell, it's not even a silly, frivolous rule. Since a copy of that form is what gets sent along with the urine sample for screening, since that's the form that the lab doing the screening actually sees and informs their decision about what tests to do and what biases to take, you can't even say that it's just meaningless bureaucracy.
Unless you're Chael Sonnen. Rather than show some respect and admitting there was a bureaucratic hassle, that he just didn't file the proper paperwork at the proper time, and it won't happen, again, he decided, instead, to repeat a bunch of lies and blame the CSAC. His ego is so fragile that rather than saving face, he repeated a lie.
It isn't even a particularly good lie. He's a professional athlete. He should have had his testosterone checked well before the pre-fight piss test. Because the CSAC's rules say that testosterone replacement therapy can't be used to exceed specific (and reasonably high) values. Regardless of whether the testosterone was legally obtained, he was still over the legal limit of testosterone for purposes of being roided up. Controlling his medication to fit inside the legal limit is his responsibility and, regardless of other issues, he failed. Not the CSAC but Chael Sonnen. He wouldn't have been in this bind at all if he'd been responsible about his drug use.
So, fuck that guy. I don't like mincing, mealy-mouthed braggarts who can't pronounce the words they use and whose suits don't fit right.
The next bit was when he called San Luis Obispo "San Louis Obiscopo". I was, "Dude, really?" It was embarrassing.
But the big this is that I don't like it when my intelligence is insulted. After losing to Anderson Silva, Sonnen's piss test came back hot. He got caught taking steroids. At an appeals hearing, he said he pissed hot because he was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy and he claimed that he told some doctor that he was undergoing TRT . . .
Well, no. Like everywhere, California has laws concerning professional sports. There is a specific form that an athlete has to disclose by a specific date that includes all drugs that they're taking. This is, indeed, part of any urine analysis. They need to know what's in your body that might effect the drug screenings. On that form, the only form that counts in this regard, Sonnen was not forthcoming. And as with all things legal, ignorance is not an excuse. It doesn't matter if Sonnen thought he'd fulfilled his obligations by telling a doctor on the California State Athletic Commission. What matters is the form. Hell, it's not even a silly, frivolous rule. Since a copy of that form is what gets sent along with the urine sample for screening, since that's the form that the lab doing the screening actually sees and informs their decision about what tests to do and what biases to take, you can't even say that it's just meaningless bureaucracy.
Unless you're Chael Sonnen. Rather than show some respect and admitting there was a bureaucratic hassle, that he just didn't file the proper paperwork at the proper time, and it won't happen, again, he decided, instead, to repeat a bunch of lies and blame the CSAC. His ego is so fragile that rather than saving face, he repeated a lie.
It isn't even a particularly good lie. He's a professional athlete. He should have had his testosterone checked well before the pre-fight piss test. Because the CSAC's rules say that testosterone replacement therapy can't be used to exceed specific (and reasonably high) values. Regardless of whether the testosterone was legally obtained, he was still over the legal limit of testosterone for purposes of being roided up. Controlling his medication to fit inside the legal limit is his responsibility and, regardless of other issues, he failed. Not the CSAC but Chael Sonnen. He wouldn't have been in this bind at all if he'd been responsible about his drug use.
So, fuck that guy. I don't like mincing, mealy-mouthed braggarts who can't pronounce the words they use and whose suits don't fit right.
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