Chael: No apologies, I’m not sorry

Mike Bohn is on an absolute tear at MMAJunkie, the best news site in MMA. He just transcribed Chael Sonnen’s debut You’re Welcome with Chael Sonnen podcast. Sonnen of course has retired from mixed martial arts, following multiple PED test failures.

I’m not going to apologize because I’m not sorry, said Sonnen. I’m a consenting adult; I knew exactly what I was doing. This was a premeditated decision. If I go jump in my car and I back up and I hit my neighbor’s garbage cans, I’m sorry for that. This was a calculated decision. I made the decision and I’ll live with it. That’s it. I wouldn’t make any excuses about it.

Here’s the problem: it worked. There’s a term out there, ‘performance-enhancing drugs.’ The reality is, that’s all medicine. There’s no medicine made that isn’t meant to make you better. It’s all meant to enhance you. If it did the opposite it would be malpractice. You’re not going to the doctor and saying, ‘Hey, give me something to make me worse.’ I was taking things and they were making me feel a little bit better.”

For me, the litmus test was flawed. Here was my litmus test: can’t be a steroid and it’s got to be legal. I can’t take anything – I don’t want to be in possession or consume anything that’s not legal. And what I’m talking about there is I’m not talking about the commissions and the rules, I’m talking about the law. I’m talking about if I’m holding something in my possession and a police office sees me, am I allowed to have that or aren’t I? If the answer’s, ‘Yes,’ then I’m in. That was my test. If I can get this legally, if there’s a legal medication, I’m taking it.

“I’m not cross-referencing that with the commission. I’m not going to take the rules or anything over that of a doctor. I told myself to sleep well at night. That’s a flawed test. I don’t think a lot of guys do that from this era. I don’t think there’s a lot of guys that do it. I think that the problem, or the guys in the violation of the rules are the guys from my time. The guys that before these rules take place or were changes and adapted to what they are now, the guys that got set in their ways, they grew up through the 80’s and grew up in the early ’90s, they just grew up doing stuff wrong. I think that’s where the real problem is. I know that’s where it comes for me. The other thing is that it was working. I was feeling good, I was having some good success. You’ve got to stay in compliance, it’s completely wrong, but there it is. I’m speaking purely about mindset now. I think that’s what my mindset was.

I had a plethora of things in my system. I thought it was out of my system. I had done my own tests and they came back hot. So I never asked for a license and I kept testing myself. I waited until they were clean, I then asked for a license. They gave me a license, and then they tested me. They sent it to a lab that was far superior than the ones I had access to, and they found the stuff in my system. That’s it. I’m beat. I took it and I did it.”

I’m not going to incriminate myself, particularly when you’re dealing with embarrassment. If you did something and you’re ashamed you did it and you’re embarrassed, you’ve got to come out to the public and they’re going to make this known. You don’t have to give yourself up. You can handle that however you want. You can diverge, you can divulge, you can lie about, you can scream about it. You can do whatever you want, but ultimately when it comes out you’re going to have to face the music and that’s it.

If you’re going to play that game, if you’re going to try to get away with something; when you’re beat, you’re beat. I wouldn’t try to unwind that and go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a little more to it.’ There’s nothing more to it. There’s nothing more to the story. I took something, I got caught with it, it’s tarnished and that’s it.