Chael Sonnen continues to outdo himself with outrageous remarks.
Each time he publicly comments on one of his rivals – usually the Brazilian Silva middleweights Anderson and Wanderlei – he goes a step further and makes it seem like he does not have much further he can go without being outright crude.
But in an interview with Ariel Helwani/AOL released this week, the middleweight contender showed he has plenty more where the rest of it came from. Among many, many insults aimed at Anderson and Wanderlei, he also laid into Brazil in general – and the Nogueira brothers.
“You have to understand. If I say something in a very private manner that isn’t intended for a certain audience, come on, you can’t hold that against me. I picked my medium very carefully when I talked about Brazil. I went to the internet. And if I had the foggiest idea that they had computers in Brazil, I wouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I was in Las Vegas when the Nogueira brothers first touched down in America.There was a bus, this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Little Nog tried to feed it a carrot, while Big Nog was petting it. He thought it was a horse.
“This really happened. He tried to feed a bus a carrot, and now you’re telling me this country has computers? I didn’t know that!”
Opinion is sharply divided when it comes to Sonnen’s smack talk and in particular his comments about Brazil being a third-world country. Some find them funny, some find them racist. Some see the humour but think they sail a little close to the wind.
Regardless, his next opponent is not Brazilian and so a change of tactics might be required. Sonnen is matched with US military veteran Brian Stann for UFC 136. To say taking verbal potshots at Stann would be disastrous PR would be putting it mildly.
Of course there’s no saying Sonnen would feel inclined to do that anyway. All-American to the core, he is a member of the Republican party and has represented them at local government level in the past.