Chael Sonnen hasn’t had it the easiest in the last couple of weeks. Not only did he suffer from what he calls an “embarrassing” end to the Tito Ortiz fight at Bellator 170 but he also got fired on the Celebrity Apprentice in addition to Bellator pulling him from his own grappling promotion’s match,
As far as the Tito Ortiz fight goes and the controversial interpretations of the bout he told the Luke Thomas Show:
“I can tell you, if you’re ever in a contest and somebody thinks that you threw it, like some of my fans in this case, like ‘he wasn’t trying’ — no, the hard reality is I got put in a choke,” Sonnen said. “I was trying and he squeezed the choke better than I defended it, and as much as I appreciate you guys trying to give me an excuse, man, I’m a guy who hates them.
“It’s fun to be a good winner, it’s hard to be a good loser, but it’s the process. It’s protocol and procedure, and if you get beat, you’ve got to tap and surrender, man. You’ve got to own it forever. You can’t go back and say, ‘well, I didn’t try.’ So as much as I appreciate supporters offering an excuse for me, there’s not an excuse, man. I got put in a choke and I had to tap.”
Sonnen also went on to explain the reason behind his recent pullout at Submission Underground 3:
“That’s contractual. You have to go in and get permission, and that’s the same with the UFC. That is in the contract, and Bellator just didn’t have time. They were like, ‘hey, listen, we don’t think we’ve got a commission issue here, but we could. All we have to do is simply contact them and find out that we don’t, you didn’t give us any time.’ They’re like, ‘you stepped in on Tuesday, that gives us four working days. We’re just not positive we can get this done.They were as polite and professional as can be. And I got it, I did spring this onto them. It was supposed to be Hector versus Garry. Hector pulled out, he ended up taking a fight with Johny Hendricks. It was just tough. Garry’s a scary guy, it’s hard to get anybody to agree (to face him), particularly on short notice, particularly by the time you give them a plane ticket, fly them out to Oregon. There’s a lot of moving parts, so it was easy for me to just go, alright, I’m in. But Bellator was great about it, and they said, ‘hey, you didn’t quite give us enough time.’”
