Did you know that Chael Sonnen is the man behind the spectacular Submission Underground (SUG) promotion?
Yup, that’s right!

However, the last Submission Underground event – SUG 29 – took place in December 2021…
And since then, there’s been no news of SUG 30.

What happened to it?
Chael Sonnen shared a part of the story in a recent “El Segundo” podcast episode:

That’s such an open wound. I loved it and it was such a passion. It’s hard you know, just to get two guys to come into town and get a venue set up and be able to show it to the world.

The issue, as explained by Sonnen, stemmed from the UFC Fight Pass not respecting an agreement that the two parties made:

We had a deal with [UFC] Fight Pass and, you know, we had hard feelings.

We brought them content during a pandemic. There’s a lot that goes into that and… We had made a deal.
We also made a deal of: “Oh, here’s how we’re going to do it”, and they forgot the deal.

They told us: “You got that in writing?”
And that is not what it’s like to do business with Dana White. You do not have to have it in writing, you just have a verbal.

So I could have gone to him and said: “Man, these guys…”
But I didn’t, I let it go. I think for ego reasons.

Sonnen tried to find another distribution partner, but hasn’t had any luck so far:

I thought I was going to have a new one.

We were talking with FloGrappling, then Khabib looked like he was going to take it through Eagle FC.
They were doing it and they had that app, they were putting on events all the time, and I thought we were going to go over there.

And one thing got stalled to the next, and to the next, and here we are.
Still looking to satisfy that.

But Submission Underground will return:

We didn’t break up the team, the team is still here. We had a whole bunch of dates, we just converted those to MMA.

So we’re holding MMA events on those same dates, with the same cage, with the same team and we would like to then go back and have the Submission Undergrounds.

But we gotta get that worked out.