The full brawl between Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen during the filming of ‘The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3’ was finally aired last night on the UFC Fight Pass service, and if you didn’t get a chance to see it then we’ve got a blow-by-blow account of it, plus reactions from the people involved.
The Brawl:
The situation goes down cage-side in the TUF gym with the two rivals staring at each other – Sonnen standing impassively with his arms folded while Silva is more animated and looks agitated.
“Soon,” Silva says threateningly multiple times as he punches his fist into the palm of his other hand.
“Oh, I wish. I can’t wait,” Sonnen responds.
“How do you feel saying things like that when I’ve been challenging you for years?” Sonnen enquires.
If he was hoping for an answer he would be disappointed as Silva just spits at his feet and continues smacking his fist into his hand.
“I’m going to kick your ass, bad,” Silva taunts.
Undeterred, Sonnen continues with the line of questioning, asking Silva again if it feels weird that he’s challenging him despite the fact that he’s been calling him out for years?
Silva laughs this off, saying that they now have a date to fight.
“When?” Sonnen enquires, claiming that he genuinely doesn’t know.
“I know,” Silva says repeatedly.
“I hope you don’t hurt your hands, I hope you don’t hurt your , cos man, you’re never going to forget what I’m going to do with you,” ‘The Axe Murderer’ says, getting in close and pointing his finger in Sonnen’s face. “I’m going to hurt you a lot. You’re going to see, .”
“OK…but, can we talk now?” Sonnen asks, continuing to brush aside Silva’s threats.
Silva’s not impressed with this request and makes it clear that he has no interest in being pals with him.
“I don’t wanna be your friend, I wanna hurt you,” he says angrily before unleashing a string of expletives, turning and walking off.
“But I don’t know the date [of the fight], tell me the date” Sonnen says, continuing to toy with his opposite number.
“Now, do it now,” an irate Silva states, pointing at the ground in front of him.
Sensing that Silva is now on the brink Sonnen tries to calm him down, but the situation is getting out of hand quickly now and Silva keeps saying that they should do it now.
Suddenly Silva leaps forward, slapping his hands together inches from Sonnen’s face.
“Stop it, you have to stop,” Sonnen warns, his arms unfolded for the first time, but now down by his sides. “Please stop.”
Silva is still shouting “Now!” and moving forward aggressively again. Sonnen takes the initiative, shoving Silva backwards forcefully and adopting a fighting stance while shouting, “I can’t let you get close.”
That’s just what Silva tries to do though, stutter-stepping forward, looking for an opportunity to strike.
Silva unleashes a wide right hook with an open palm, but Sonnen ducks under it and goes for the takedown. They hit the deck with Sonnen on top throwing a few right hands that hit off Silva’s shoulder.
Almost immediately there’s a mass of fighters and coaches surrounding them, so it’s difficult to see exactly what’s happening, but both men look like they are still trying to fight and Silva is landing a few short punches to the head and an elbow.
There’s a sea of people in there now and they are almost all trying to separate the two, but Silva’s assistant coach Andre Dida can clearly be seen landing blows to the back of Sonnen’s head and then rips the shirt off his back.
Finally they manage to drag Sonnen out of the fray, and then Silva gets back up, with both men appearing to be relatively unscathed.
The Aftermath:
So, what do the people involved have to say about the incident?
According to Sonnen in an interview with Yahoo! Sports, what led up to the initial verbal confrontation documented above was him accusing Silva of being drunk after the Brazilian star turned up late to filming and had the smell of alcohol on his breath.
As for the brawl, he admits, “the whole thing was regrettable.” However, it’s Dida’s involvement in it that appears to irk him the most.
“It ended up being a two-on-one, and in that aspect, that was the most unfortunate part,” Sonnen tells MMAfighting.com.
“What happened was the other knucklehead jumped in, that was a crime,” he continued. “That’s what it was. That was straight up illegal.”
Dida has also spoken out and acknowledged that he did hit Sonnen.
“My intention was to separate them, but I saw that Sonnen was trying to punch him, so in my mind I realized I needed to get Sonnen out of there as fast as possible to make him stop punching Wanderlei,” Dida told MMAfighting. “I would never let Wanderlei Silva in a bad situation in front of me. I punched Sonnen to make him stop, but he didn’t. (The other coaches) tried to get me out of there, but I came back and punched him again. I just wanted to get Sonnen out of there.”
Oh, and in case anybody’s still wondering – the official date for Silva and Sonnen’s fight in the Octagon where they will hopefully settle their differences once and for all is July 5th in Las Vegas on the main card of UFC 175.
