Sonnen: WWE offered me 5 mil to leave UFC
Chael Sonnen: “If you want to play ‘cutthroat business,’ he will play, but if you want to relax and just let him take care of things you’re going to be a lot better off.”
On his latest You’re Welcome podcast, former UFC contender Chael Sonnen said WWE owner Vince McMahon once offered him $5,000,000 to leave the UFC. He also said that any discussion of a return to the UFC by Brock Lesnar is a negotiating tactic to maximize revenue from the WWE. And The Gangster from Oregon said UFC president Dana White can be a very easy guy to negotiate with.
“Here’s the nuts and bolts of it: I was offered $5 million Vince McMahon,” said Sonnen as transcribed by David St. Martin for MMA Fighting. “Now, I was still under contract with the UFC and I never took this to Dana. I handled it on my own. I told them ‘No’ and that was the end of that. I never told Dana White this story, but here’s why I didn’t tell him. I knew if I called Dana and said, ‘I’ve got a $5 million offer from Vince McMahon,’ Dana would have matched it.”
“Dana would have come close and now all of a sudden I’m not a loyal employee. I’m not loyal to the UFC. I’m shopping them and I’m being loyal to myself. That’s business. That’s how that works and I don’t think anyone would have had hard feelings but I didn’t see myself that way.”
“That something really interesting about Dana. If you want to play ‘cutthroat business,’ he will play, but if you want to relax and just let him take care of things you’re going to be a lot better off.
“If you go in there and try to negotiate, he’ll negotiate and he’ll do it like a regular business deal. If you play hard ball a lot of times you’ll win. A lot of times you will win. Dana likes to say, ‘Yes.’ However, if a show does exceptionally well you will be bound to what you went in there and fought him for.”
“The UFC, on a regular basis, negotiates against themselves. Dana White will sit down at the negotiating table and he’s negotiating against himself, against the old contract he’s already got with a guy. There’s no nobody else coming in and bidding on him and he’s still giving guys raises.”
Everything Chael Sonnen says is entertaining. However, not everything he says is factually correct. Indeed, he ambles inscrutably between fact, fabrication, the moon, and New York city with marvelous dexterity. So what do you think is true, if anything? Did the Vince McMahon offer him $5,000,000? Is a top fighter better off letting Dana White negotiate for him? And does God care one way or another about a borderline illegal fist-fight on Saturday night?