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Chael Sonnen took time out of his extremely busy schedule of lying about his Internet activities, letter writing, quitting on the Oregon Republican Party and acting pissy on television to sit down with the Houston Chronicle over the weekend. You know what that means: Set your watches to Crazy Time, kids. What pearls of wisdom did the multitalented middleweight drop on our unsuspecting asses this time? Well, Sonnen says people who claim to be “full time fighters” are lazy and that he has a strategy to defeat Anderson Silva on Aug. 7 at UFC 117 that has “never been beaten.”
Sonnen also inadvertently let slip how he’s managed to balance his pro fighting career and alleged other businesses, all while talking an uninterrupted line of shit about Silva during the past few months: He’s only training three hours a day.
"Look, anybody who is a full time fighter is a full time lazy guy,” Sonnen tells the Chronicle’s Jeremy Botter. “There's no way. What do we work out for, three hours a day? I've got a two hour session with Team Quest and a one hour session on my own each day. That's three hours a day. I've got friends who spend more time playing golf. That leaves you 21 hours a day."
As Sonnen expertly demonstrates on a regular basis, it seems as if those other 21 hours are best spent acting like a complete insaniac. In public if you can swing it. But Botter writes that the reason Sonnen doesn’t devote more time to MMA is because he “believes that he can contribute to society in a meaningful way and uses his time accordingly.”
"You can either contribute to society or you can play Playstation,” Sonnen says. “There is no such thing as a full time fighter. You can say that all you want, but unless you're working out 40 hours a week -- which you are not -- it's just not full time. That's just the truth."
As we all know, Sonnen says his other interests lie primarily in real estate and in the past he's been described as a “successful realtor.” He also harbored some small-time political aspirations, winning the Republican primary in an Oregon state legislative election this year before dropping out of the race last month. In doing so, Sonnen cited a vague “2006 legal issue” (also real estate-related) in a statement published by Fight! Magazine.
"I am not at liberty to disclose the details, but my name was involved in a real estate case that requires a ruling,” Sonnen wrote at the time. “If the ruling is adverse, I would be disqualified from running for office until 2011."
No one knows exactly what legal matter Sonnen was referring to and that includes Oregon’s Republican party, which told The Oregonian newspaper in June it wasn’t sure why Sonnen had dropped out of the race. A party spokesman said the first he found out about Sonnen’s legal issues was when he read the former candidate's concession statement online. Sonnen told the state GOP he was exiting the race for the age old, all-purpose “personal reasons.”
It should also be noted that a Google search for “Chael Sonnen Oregon realtor” doesn’t bring up any legitimate, business-related listings for Sonnen involving real estate, at least not on the first three pages. It does yield the sweet local television ad you see at top, so we can say pretty confidently that Sonnen actually is a realtor in Oregon. Exactly how "successful" he is or how many hours per week he spends slinging houses are both a little more difficult to gauge.
What does all this mean? Nothing, except it makes me wonder exactly how much of his time Sonnen spends “contributing to society.” Especially when all of the stuff he’s been up to that we can actually verify appears to include bending the truth and acting like an a-hole. In fact, for all his talk about hard work and clean living, it's pretty easy to find examples of Sonnen not taking his own advice.
Nonetheless, bragging about how many jobs you have – and using it to imply the laziness of others -- is a pretty awesome high-school-wrestling-coach-style thing to do. It’s like bragging about how early you got up this morning or how many dips you used to be able to do, back in college.
Of course, Sonnen doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell Jeremy Botter about what a good fighter Silva is – a common trope for him recently – but says it doesn’t matter, because he’s got an unbeatable plan to take the champ’s title.
"At the end of the day, he's still going to be better than me,” Sonnen tells Botter about Silva.”He's still going to punch better than me and kick better. He's going to have a black belt in jiu-jitsu and I'm gonna have no belt in jiu-jitsu. But who cares? Who cares who is better? In 25 minutes, it's a matter of who is tougher, who can stand out there and go harder for a longer amount of time. Who can be hurt and stay in the fight anyway. Who's going to get tired and stay in the fight anyway …
"That's really it. He's gonna be better, and I'm fine with that. He's going to hurt me when he punches me, and I'm fine with that. But I'm gonna walk straight up to him, put him on his ass and beat a hole in his face. And as long as this sport has been around, that strategy has never been beaten."
Hmmm, someone might want to fact check that last claim, too …
Sonnen also inadvertently let slip how he’s managed to balance his pro fighting career and alleged other businesses, all while talking an uninterrupted line of shit about Silva during the past few months: He’s only training three hours a day.
"Look, anybody who is a full time fighter is a full time lazy guy,” Sonnen tells the Chronicle’s Jeremy Botter. “There's no way. What do we work out for, three hours a day? I've got a two hour session with Team Quest and a one hour session on my own each day. That's three hours a day. I've got friends who spend more time playing golf. That leaves you 21 hours a day."
As Sonnen expertly demonstrates on a regular basis, it seems as if those other 21 hours are best spent acting like a complete insaniac. In public if you can swing it. But Botter writes that the reason Sonnen doesn’t devote more time to MMA is because he “believes that he can contribute to society in a meaningful way and uses his time accordingly.”
"You can either contribute to society or you can play Playstation,” Sonnen says. “There is no such thing as a full time fighter. You can say that all you want, but unless you're working out 40 hours a week -- which you are not -- it's just not full time. That's just the truth."
As we all know, Sonnen says his other interests lie primarily in real estate and in the past he's been described as a “successful realtor.” He also harbored some small-time political aspirations, winning the Republican primary in an Oregon state legislative election this year before dropping out of the race last month. In doing so, Sonnen cited a vague “2006 legal issue” (also real estate-related) in a statement published by Fight! Magazine.
"I am not at liberty to disclose the details, but my name was involved in a real estate case that requires a ruling,” Sonnen wrote at the time. “If the ruling is adverse, I would be disqualified from running for office until 2011."
No one knows exactly what legal matter Sonnen was referring to and that includes Oregon’s Republican party, which told The Oregonian newspaper in June it wasn’t sure why Sonnen had dropped out of the race. A party spokesman said the first he found out about Sonnen’s legal issues was when he read the former candidate's concession statement online. Sonnen told the state GOP he was exiting the race for the age old, all-purpose “personal reasons.”
It should also be noted that a Google search for “Chael Sonnen Oregon realtor” doesn’t bring up any legitimate, business-related listings for Sonnen involving real estate, at least not on the first three pages. It does yield the sweet local television ad you see at top, so we can say pretty confidently that Sonnen actually is a realtor in Oregon. Exactly how "successful" he is or how many hours per week he spends slinging houses are both a little more difficult to gauge.
What does all this mean? Nothing, except it makes me wonder exactly how much of his time Sonnen spends “contributing to society.” Especially when all of the stuff he’s been up to that we can actually verify appears to include bending the truth and acting like an a-hole. In fact, for all his talk about hard work and clean living, it's pretty easy to find examples of Sonnen not taking his own advice.
Nonetheless, bragging about how many jobs you have – and using it to imply the laziness of others -- is a pretty awesome high-school-wrestling-coach-style thing to do. It’s like bragging about how early you got up this morning or how many dips you used to be able to do, back in college.
Of course, Sonnen doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell Jeremy Botter about what a good fighter Silva is – a common trope for him recently – but says it doesn’t matter, because he’s got an unbeatable plan to take the champ’s title.
"At the end of the day, he's still going to be better than me,” Sonnen tells Botter about Silva.”He's still going to punch better than me and kick better. He's going to have a black belt in jiu-jitsu and I'm gonna have no belt in jiu-jitsu. But who cares? Who cares who is better? In 25 minutes, it's a matter of who is tougher, who can stand out there and go harder for a longer amount of time. Who can be hurt and stay in the fight anyway. Who's going to get tired and stay in the fight anyway …
"That's really it. He's gonna be better, and I'm fine with that. He's going to hurt me when he punches me, and I'm fine with that. But I'm gonna walk straight up to him, put him on his ass and beat a hole in his face. And as long as this sport has been around, that strategy has never been beaten."
Hmmm, someone might want to fact check that last claim, too …