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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Chael Sonnen thought he knew what he was getting into when he stepped across the cage from Jon Jones last Saturday at UFC 159. That didn't end up entirely being the case, as he got taken down repeatedly and beat up en route to a first round stoppage. In his first appearance after the event on Tuesday, Sonnen described what it was like being in the cage with Jones.
"This was like getting into a bear cage," Sonnen said on UFC Tonight on Fuel TV. "This guy was a monster of a man. We weighed in at the same size the day before, and I don't know how that was possible. I put my arms around him and I thought, 'oh my god, you're a big guy.' As far as the match went, I got beat up."
"[Coming in I thought] I was going to have to grind him down. I could see he poses a lot of problems. He's big, he's strong and he's got the wing span of a radioactive condor. I knew he'd take me down, but I never thought that he could take me down repeatedly. That was a surprise. And the fact that he tried so quickly, I was thrown off a little."
The fight was stopped when Sonnen curled up against the cage after Jones hit him with a knee to the body and started unleashing strikes, and it seemed to some like a quick stoppage. But Sonnen didn't protest much, and wasn't going to question it on Tuesday, either.
"It's two-fold, any time the ref helps you and stops a fight to keep you from getting hurt, you never want to come out and say anything that could disparage his judgment," Sonnen said. "At the same time, we're in the middle of an ass-whipping contest, let us get after it. When I had my hands up because a guy is punching me, that's called defense. But I never want to question a referee."
Of course, had the fight continued, it may have been stopped between rounds because of the freak toe injury Jones suffered in the round. That would have given Sonnen a TKO "win" on the injury, and the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship. It's not the way he would have wanted to take it, but that wouldn't have stopped Sonnen from grabbing that belt and leaving New Jersey with it.
"Diplomatically you don’t ever want to win that way," Sonnen said. "The ones that hurt are the ones you're supposed to win and then you blow it. But if it was given to me, I would have grabbed that belt, I would have held it up, grabbed the mic and told the crowd the golden rule is 'he with the gold rules,' and I would have walked out of the place and never looked back."
Penick's Analysis: It really would have been the single worst ending to a title fight in UFC history. Worse than Belfort beating Randy Couture from the sliced eyelid just seconds in. And that's because Jones had thoroughly proven to be the better fighter before that, and it was a fight that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Thankfully, everyone was spared that, and even Sonnen understands how outmatched he was in that fight given his descriptions here. He put forth his best effort, and he deserves credit for that, but he was in there with a completely different level of fighter last weekend.
[Chael Sonnen art by Grant Gould © MMATorch.com]
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Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_16695.shtml
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