Chael Sonnen Reacts To Wanderlei Silva’s Shove At Press Conference
We are now just days away from Bellator’s second pay-per-view (PPV) event, as Bellator: NYC is set to go down this Saturday (June 24, 2017) live from Madison Square Garden in New York City. The event will be headlined by a grudge match years in the making, as veterans Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva are finally set to do battle.
The two came face-to-face for the first time prior to the fight today (June 22, 2017) at the pre-fight press conference, and to little surprise, Silva shoved Sonnen. Speaking after the incident, Sonnen said that he can’t believe he keeps ‘falling for’ Silva’s antics:
“I can’t believe I keep falling for it,” Sonnen told MMAjunkie after the news conference. “Every time I let that guy get within arms reach, he does something. I won’t make like today was some big deal. So he touched me? But it could have been a punch; it could have been a kick. I don’t know why that guy has to get so handsy all the time. Even when we were coming across the stage, I put my hand out and said, ‘Just stop right there; they can take the photo from there. Let’s just stay apart for a little bit.’
“My biggest thing with it is, I don’t want this fight called off. I don’t want it canceled for any reason. I had Anderson Silva pull some stuff at a weigh-in one time (before UFC 148), and I knew it was because he didn’t want to do the fight. He was trying to get me to attack him so he could go to the hospital and play up an injury. I’m not falling for any of this stuff. If I have to take some pushes from Wanderlei Silva or whatever it is, this fight is going to happen.”
The two rivals have been scheduled to meet numerous times, but the bout has yet to come to fruition until now. Now that it’s finally set to take place, Sonnen is predicting an early finish:
“I would never play with a guy – I would never stay out there longer than I have too,” Sonnen said. “We’ll go out there and get him out of there as quickly as I can. As far as how it goes, I don’t care. I don’t care if we’ve got to stand and bang and all these stupid things you hear. It’s all stupid. You’re out there looking for a victory, and you get it as quickly as you can.”
Sonnen will enter the Bellator cage for the second time against Silva, as he made his promotional debut earlier this year, dropping a submission loss to Tito Ortiz last January.
Silva, on the other hand, will be making his Bellator debut. In fact, “The Axe Murderer” hasn’t competed since 2013 when he scored a stoppage victory over Brian Stann.
With that being said, how do you expect this fight to play out?
