Sonnen: Aldo threatened to sue me and UFC

On his latest You’re Welcome podcast, Controversial and brilliant retired fighter and current fight analyst Chael Sonnen said he received a call from an attorney representing UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo, who threatened to sue him for defamation.

“I get a phonecall. So I answer it on the car speaker,” began Sonnen, as transcribed by Ben Kiely for Joe.ie. “It’s a lawyer from Brazil threatening to sue me for defamation. Her client? Jose Aldo.”

“I had just done a show, Michael Landsburg out in Canada. Landsburg asked me about Aldo-McGregor and do I think it will happen and blah-blah-blah, and I answered the question.”

“Somewhere in my answer I said that Aldo pulling out was very fugazi because he had two separate sets of x-rays. He had the x-rays which had been sent from his doctors to the UFC’s doctors which showed a bruised rib and he was cleared to fight. And he had a separate set of x-rays he personally released online which very clearly showed a broken rib.”

“They’re (the lawyer) saying this is inflammatory, that he did not have two sets of x-rays, that the x-ray he put online is the same as the x-ray that had been sent to the UFC and where this story of a bruised rib vs a broken rib came out, he doesn’t know, it’s not true and I’m perpetuating it.”

“They said, ‘we won’t sue you if you stop talking about it.’ I said, ‘Hold on, I’ll go a step further than that, if I said it and it’s not true, I’ll give them an apology.’ I don’t want to go around saying the guy put out two x-rays if that’s not true, but I’m a little confused here. I parroted this information, I heard it and I repeated it, so where did this story come from? I heard this at a UFC press conference.”

“The attorney said, ‘yeah, well pay attention in the next few days, you won’t hear the UFC saying it anymore because before we called and threatened you with a lawsuit, we called and threatened them with a lawsuit.”

“I have to assume he’s telling the truth. Jose Aldo is threatening to sue me and claims that he threatened to sue the UFC. That’s a pretty big bluff. That’s a big enough bluff that I think he’s telling the truth.”

As described, the call was over remarks Sonnen made on TSN’s Off the Record with Michael Landsberg, when he discussed Jose Aldo’s pulling out of the fight with Conor McGregor, and the X-Rays that got varying interpretations from different doctors.

The problem arose over a misinterpretation of UFC president Dana White’s remarks.

“So what happened was, when the pictures went out onto the internet, right, and you saw this rib down here, that was an old injury,” said White at the time, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMAFighting.com. “That was an old injury that was calcified white. The real injury was the bruised rib and cartilage. He had a bruised rib and cartilage. And the big problem for Aldo in taking the fight, wasn’t the fight. It was making weight.”

Aldo did not release old X-Rays claiming they were new. He released new X-Rays of an injury that White alleges was old. Sonnen said to Landsberg that something was fugazi.

“I want to be responsible with my words because a guy’s health comes first but that story is extremely fugazi,” said Sonnen, as transcribed by David St. Martin for MMAFighting.com. “Two different x-rays came out. Five different stories came out. His coach says he doesn’t want to coach him anymore. Jose says he doesn’t want to be in the weight class anymore and his own teammate, after he injures him, goes on a media tour telling everybody how he did it. That was a weird, weird deal.”

In using the term ‘fugazi’ Sonnen was not referring to the post-hardcore band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1987. He was using the term popularized in the film Donnie Brasco. It means fake.

None of Aldo’s X-Rays were either fake or old. The sole question was whether the injury was old or new, with UFC president Dana White adamantly saying what appears to be a broken rib is an old injury that had since calcified.