Dana White gave the lowdown on what exactly happened at The Ultimate Fighter Finale when Chael Sonnon got attacked by a fan
By Adrian Collins
Last Saturday The Ultimate Fighter Finale took place, and Chael Sonnen was on the scene in a coaching role for two of his fighters, Kevin Gastelum and Uriah Hall.
When he went to shake hands with members of the crowd, one guy called him over, and according to UFC President Dana White, “starts swinging on him, started trying to punch him”. It turns out the fan was Brazilian, and had been pretty upset by Sonnen’s trash talk before his fight at UFC148 with Anderson Silva.
As the fan was being bundled off by security, he was screaming “fuck you, you piece of shit, I’m from Brazil”.
According to MMAmania.com, Sonnen had been not only insulting Silva, but also Silva’s wife (saying he’d pat her on the butt on get her to make him a steak), as well as other Brazilian fighters Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Wanderlei Silva. .
While we’re no geniuses here, we did note that it’s probably not a good idea to attack a professional fighter surrounded by security. As Dana himself noted, “he was not taken out of there politely”.4
Sonnen noted that had the guy been a quarter of a second faster, it would have connected with him, but the security were too quick.
Chael was quick to add that, being a trained fighter, it wouldn’t have been right to hit his attacer back: “[We] compete in highly regulated and sanctioned matches […] but if he would have connected, I would have turned the other cheek and walked away”.
“I think a fan can do anything they want. I think they can heckle, a fan can boo, but they can’t touch you. But the same thing goes for me. I can yell at a fan too, but you can’t touch them”
You can watch the whole press scrum here, if you fancy it, and hear Dana White tak about his blood spinning treatment too. He mentions the incident with Sonnen about seven minutes in.
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