Chael Sonnen Comments On Usman-Masvidal Super Bowl Media Day Incident

Last week, UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman and Jorge Masvidal crossed paths during Super Bowl media day in Miami, Florida.

This was shortly before UFC president Dana White announced that the Las Vegas-based mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion is looking to book Usman vs. Masvidal for the 170-pound title for International Fight Week. Now, former UFC and Bellator star Chael Sonnen has taken to his YouTube channel to offer his thoughts on the incident. Sonnen, who was actually at radio row an hour before everything went down, found everything a bit suspicious.

“While I’m at radio row, guess what happens?” Sonnen asked. “Masvidal and Usman get into it. Now, in all fairness, I left about one hour before this happened. But I knew the situation and I knew the location, and there was something about this that looked very foogazy. And it only looked foogazy because I had just been there, I had known the layout of it, I know the management teams that you have with you, and the PR teams that are there to take you to certain sections and certain tables, which, hence, would keep two maniacs, that are oil and water right now, Masvidal and Usman, from coming in each other’s paths.

“So the mere fact that they crossed up with cameras to roll, for me, was a little suspicious. Now, I’m then confronted with the fact of, is Usman or Masvidal even capable of doing something phony? No. No. Those are two very real guys and I don’t think they’d be part of it. But it does seem as though somebody else brought them together and had cameras rolling while this was going on. I have to share with you, the faceoff, like those things, always is compelling to me.

“When two professional fighters get into some kind of, and in this case, a verbal dispute, organically, there’s something about that for me that’s compelling. And I think that when I say me, I mean us. We do kind of – there’s a reason those clips go viral, right? But, there’s also a part of it where, okay, let’s just break it down, let’s break down what happened. Usman showed up and apparently he had a cast on. I actually never saw his cast.

“But Masvidal said to him, ‘No no no no, I’m not going to take advantage of you, you’re in a cast. You go your way and I’ll go my way.’ But that’s a hard thing to do when you’re in one of these faceoffs unless the other guy walks away first.

Sonnen explained that he himself has been in many situations like that himself throughout his career. He admitted that two trained fighters such as Usman and Masvidal likely could’ve easily gotten past the security holding them apart to throw down, but fighters are happy to back down if broken apart. “The Bad Guy” added that he doesn’t think Masvidal or Usman crossed the line with the incident at all.

“It’s one of these weird things, and it’s some kind of weird street bravado and masculinity that guys have, and I have it too, I’m happy to walk away, but you have to walk away first,” Sonnen said. “And that’s where the problem comes. Now, if anybody gets in between us, we can be two trained killers, I don’t care if a declawed kitten gets in between us, if the kitten then pushes us away, we’re happy to play along. We’re happy to take two or three steps back and look at our adversary and go ‘I would’ve done this thing, you know I would’ve, but the kitten said back up.’

“That’s a very real thing. We’re happy to play along. But there is also a part of me, that, when these two guys are challenging each other, ‘Well, you do something first, you do something first,’ when this is going on, it’s like, no no, allow me to be perfectly clear to you, you’re not going to question my bravery. My question of my bravery will happen when a contract is presented to me and I either sign the damn thing or I don’t. That’s when my bravery gets found out. Secondly, allow me to explain this to you, friend. I’m not looking to fight you, period, hard stop.

“I’m looking to fight you, on TV, under the unified, at an agreed-upon time, and in an agreed-upon weight class, period hard stop. Allow me to finish this sentence, because if you heard me say, ‘I want to beat you up,’ you did not then recognize the rest of my words. We are athletes, we are prizefighters, we save it for a certain time. I don’t think either one of these guys crossed the line. I don’t even think they came close, I think they gave us a little bit of fun. I also think somebody in each of those camps made sure that they crossed paths while the cameras were rolling.”

What do you think about Sonnen’s comments on the Usman and Masvidal incident at Super Bowl media day?