Issue 149
Nowadays he's an MMA commentator and analyst, but back in 2012 Chael Sonnen learned the hard way not to trash talk Anderson Silva, falling to a second and final defeat against the Brazilian legend.
Maybe he'd have been better off telling ‘The Spider’ he was scared. Why?
Well, a UCLA research team asked 88 people with a fear of spiders to approach a live tarantula. Participants told to say they were “anxious and frightened” performed better with their fear the following week than others told to say something else.
Note to Anderson Silva’s next opponent, then. Tell him how scared you are of him pre-fight, and you might perform a bit better against the pound-for-pound number one. And let's face it, you're gonna need all the help you can get.
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