Apparently all the Sonnen vs. Silva jawing is not just play for the cameras. The two of them have been coaching in Brazil for season 3 of the Ultimate Fighter’s South American sister and today news broke that Wanderlei Silva took a swing at Chael Sonnen. Apparently Sonnen got out of the way and took Silva down into mount at which point one of Wanderlei’s trainers clocked Sonnen in the back of the head. Sonnen is said to have been alright following the blow, but in pain nonetheless. Bloody Elbow was able to confirm the story with one of Sonnen’s coaches, after Dana White let the details slip at his press luncheon on Monday (transcript via MMAFighting).
“Wanderlei and Chael fought,” White said. “Just today. They literally fought.”
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“While they were fighting one of Wanderlei’s guys sucked punched Chael,” White said. “They went crazy, crazy s— happened there. We’re dealing with that right now too. … They literally fought today, it went on for awhile.”
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“It’s one of those things, it’s on a reality show, it’s good and it’s bad,” White said. “A fight didn’t need to break out between these two for people to be excited about this fight, because these two have been at each other’s throats.”
Sonnen and Silva have been going back and forth in their leadup to the filming of the Ultimate Fighter, including one awfully staged looking confrontation at the Olympia Expo in Las Vegas back in September. I’m still not totally sure we aren’t getting a little bit of hype here, but secondary confirmation does lend a lot of credence to the story. Informed speculation says that the puncher was Andre “Dida” Amande a former K-1 kickboxer, Dream vet and longtime Chute Boxe coach. If that’s in fact the case I have no doubt that Sonnen was in a lot of pain. Stay tuned as we’ll be sure to have updates as available.
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