Det fins få fighters i UFC som har en lika vass tunga som Conor McGregor och Chael Sonnen. Likt Sonnen har McGregors karriär fått stor hjälp hur han marknadsfört sig själv och sina matcher. Sonnen anser dock att McGregor har fått axla enorm uppgift inför UFC 189, då han ägnat väldigt mycket av sin tid åt promota den kommande matchen ensam större delen av det här året, först mot Jose Aldo och nu mot Chad Mendes.
Det här hade Sonnen att säga, via ”MMAFighting”:
It’s crossed the line of being too much. I mean, that’s just the reality of the situation. Athletes go out, we’re kind of programmed to say the same thing we think we’re supposed to say. It’s too much on Conor right now, and media will ask him that. ‘Is it too much?’ So, you know, you don’t want to put some of those things in your world. You want to deny them and keep them out so you can take care of business, but yeah, of course it’s too much. When a guy is on the opposite side of the country and he’s got three more stops before he can get home, he’s 22 pounds overweight, he’s nine days before a fight, and he’s running on two hours sleep because of all of it, it’s too much.
Innan Aldo drog sig ur på grund av sin skada var UFC 189 på väg att bli en av de största matcherna i år, troligtvis även den bäst betalande i brasilianarens karriär. Sonnen jämför det hela med sin egna match mot Anderson Silva:
We both needed that dance partner. Anderson was a very poorly drawing champion, and he was a fantastic fighter, and everybody respected him, but he didn’t have that base tuning in to watch him.
Jose Aldo was in that same spot. The guy is an amazing talent and he’s a poor drawing champion. It’s a little bit confusing, but it’s not like making a batch of cookies, man. You throw all the right ingredients in, you’re not guaranteed that the recipe is going to work. There’s an ‘it factor’ in the business, and where Jose Aldo misses ‘it,’ I’m not totally sure because he is a fantastic talent, he’s a handsome dude, he’s been around a long time. He’s got all those things you throw in the pot, but the cookies just don’t turn out right. And this would’ve changed. Conor McGregor was that missing ‘it’ that batch needed.
Sonnen är fövånad över Aldos beslut att tacka nej till matchen på grund av skadan:
I’m very surprised, business-wise. Jose Aldo can’t do an interview where he doesn’t bitch about money. It’s been coming up for years now, he’s complaining about money. And this was the big money fight. This was the biggest money fight of his career, and it will never be back. He could get this fight again down the road, but it won’t have the build-up and it won’t have the same payday. So in that regard, it was a surprise.
But if he really suffered a broken rib, man, you just can’t fight with that. It’s too tough. And let me tell you the underlying story here, and Jose has never brought this up, but he should. I’ve suffered rib injuries but I’ve never had a broken one. I’ve dislocated it and popped it, and even that, a big step down from broken, it hurts so bad. But you can’t really move. You can’t even fully breathe and take a deep breath of air.
So the point is, how’s he going to make weight? How, if he can’t move around? And Jose Aldo is a big guy. He’s been talking about moving up to 155 pounds for a couple of years now. That’s how big he is. He’s not getting any smaller as time goes on. So when you’re that big and you can’t make weight, you can’t move to get the pounds off, there’s no way you can make the walk the following night in a championship contest. So I think that’s probably really the underlying story here. I haven’t heard Jose bring it up, but as a fellow athlete I think that’s what really happened.
UFC 189 drar igång den 11 juli.
