Vinny Magalhaes guarantees a submission victory for Chael Sonnen against Anderson Silva
Vinny Magalhães has been helping Chael Sonnen on his jujitsu techniques prior to Sonnen’s rematch against Anderson Silva at UFC 148 which takes place on July 7, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Magalhães believes Sonnen will submit Silva in the fight. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, the former M-1 champion said: “I am guaranteeing a submission. Chael is going to do what he did in their first fight, but this time he is going to finish.”
The ever-outspoken Sonnen has in the past,openly made fun of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. According to Magalhães via fightlinker.com: “Chael makes fun of a lot of things. But he picks stuff up really fast. And the stuff that we worked on, I can guarantee you if he has the chance to use it in the fight, he will do it. If it’s a submission, if it’s a guard pass, whatever, I guarantee you he can do it. If he gets the chance, he can catch Anderson with something. Chael’s a pretty good grappler. Even though he’s made mistakes in his fights, overall Chael’s a good grappler. He just makes mistakes in submission defense, so pretty much that’s what we worked on. And of course some attacks, control, some of that basic stuff. Basically what we worked on was top game. We did work some submission defense, of course. But the best thing is not to get caught in a submission in the first place. If you’re just working submission defense, you have to first be in a submission. You don’t want to get that far. A lot of people ask me when they hear I was training Chael, ‘Why don’t you just work triangle defense?’ No! For me to teach you triangle defense, first I have to teach you how to be in a triangle. And I don’t want him to be there in the first place.”
When asked about Anderson Silva’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu credentials, Magalhães had this to say via BJPenn.com: “Here’s another point. A lot of people hype Anderson’s Jiu-Jitsu game because he got his black belt from the Nogueiras. But not every black belt is a high-level black belt. You just happened to have got a black belt under that guy. It’s not like he has great sweeps. It’s not like he has great submissions. How many submissions has he gotten? He submitted Henderson. He submitted Chael; that’s two guys. And he submitted Travis Lutter. So that’s three guys. He’s even got a couple submission losses. They may be eight years ago, but they’re still losses. So I feel like this whole thing about Anderson being a black belt doesn’t make much of a difference in the fight. I’m not saying he’s not good, he just might not be as good as people think he is.”
Magalhães made it very clear that Sonnen paid him handsomely for his training: “I don’t want to talk about amounts, because my management was the one dealing with the whole money situation. But he did pay more than my management asked. We asked for a certain amount, and he came up with much more. We asked for an amount for two weeks of training, and he came up with an amount which would’ve entitled him to four weeks of training. So how can I not respect the guy? He paid me double. On Chael’s check … you know how they have a line for what the check is for? He wrote ‘Defeat Silva.’ So I kept a copy, because I thought that was pretty funny.”
