Sonnen: I’ve never been ground-and-pounded like that
Chael Sonnen: “I thought I was having a rope-a-dope moment. I thought I was luring him in. That was a bad strategy it turns out.”
At the Bellator 208 post-fight press conference, Chael Sonnen talked about what it’s like coming in second behind Fedor Emelianenko.
I would call him explosive, said Sonnen, as transcribed by Jose Youngs for MMA Fighting. With his punches, there wasn’t a ton of set-ups, they just came and they came hard. Even on the ground, I had some good positions on him and he would just explode. It wasn’t exactly technique-based. It was impressive. He’s an impressive athlete.
https://twitter.com/BellatorMMA/status/1051323532096000001
In a moment that baffled armchair coaches, Sonnen appeared to try to hit a rolling back take that pits the defender’s core strength against that of the attacker. Fedor’s has arguably the greatest core strength in the history of the sport – everyone agrees when he hits, you can feel all his weight from his toes up.
I don’t think I’ve ever been ground-and-pounded like that, said Sonnen. I thought there was opportunity there. I was covering up and I thought that he was slowing down. The referee warned me — he said, ‘If you don’t move I am going to stop this.’ But I didn’t think he would because they were gong into my hands. I thought I was blocking them. I thought I was having a rope-a-dope moment. I thought I was luring him in. That was a bad strategy it turns out. That was a bad plan.
Fedor moves forward in the heavyweight Grand Prix to finals, where he fights Ryan Bader for the Bellator heavyweight championship. Sonnen’s next fight is uncertain.
We’ll see what happens, he said. If they want to do a losers ball and play this thing all the way out to third then maybe we do that. But I don’t know. That’s up to Scott Coker. If you ask me what weight class I’d rather be in, I’d say 205 is more appropriate.