Any questions about how serious Chael Sonnen is when he makes his inflammatory remarks should be answered in a YouTube clip posted on Wednesday by the UFC. Titled "The American Gangster" (see video below), Sonnen describes his upbringing in West Linn, Oregon, challenging those who quibble with his comment made to Anderson Silva: "You are an immigrant from Brazil. I am a gangster from America."
Suffice to say that Sonnen's comments aren't intended to be taken seriously. When the middleweight contender complains about years where his father barely made $100,000 or his twin neighbors having to share their Mercedes, it lends a new perspective to his more inflammatory comments about Brazil, and its hero of the moment, Silva, whom Sonnen will challenge for the UFC Middleweight Championship on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
There's always been a sense that Sonnen's brash public persona has been the result of the former All-American wrestler playing a character, rather than actual racist thoughts about Brazilians or a deficient understanding of the rules of mixed martial arts. When Sonnen claimed not to have a Twitter account (his handle @sonnench, is verified) or professed a belief that tapping out ended a fight and not just a single round (he'd had 11 fights end via submission before UFC 117), it never seemed quite believable. When he backed up his "gangster" talk with complaints about witnessing littering and jaywalking as a youngster he removed all doubt.
As Silva showed on last week's conference call and at Tuesday's press conference, he's clearly not amused by the challenger's act, and he intends to put a stop to it on Saturday night. Of course, there's no acting in the Octagon, and there was no act involved in the beating that Sonnen laid on Silva two years ago at UFC 117, before the champion saved his title with a triangle choke in the fifth round. Still, through his pro wrestling trash talk - from the "loser leaves town" challenge he laid down after beating Brian Stann at UFC 136 to the Superstar Billy Graham tributes he let loose after beating Michael Bisping in January and during Tuesday's press conference - Sonnen has taken what was already an eagerly anticipated rematch and made it into one of the biggest sporting events of the summer.
That's a pretty good act.
