Penick's Take
PENICK: Chael Sonnen gets caught in a lie, rides ridiculous denials into UFC 117
Aug 5, 2010 - 1:32:27 PM PENICK: Chael Sonnen gets caught in a lie, rides ridiculous denials into UFC 117

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Chael Sonnen has taken his shtick to a new level today, flat out denying comments he made earlier this week about Lance Armstrong, even when confronted with the evidence.

Sonnen first denied saying the comments, or even speaking with Larry Pepe on Pro MMA Radio earlier this week, while talking to MMAFighting.com's Ariel Helwani at yesterday's open workouts before UFC 117.

"I never did an interview with Larry Pepe," Sonnen said. "I've never spoke of Lance Armstrong ever."

Oh, but he has. As we highlighted earlier this week, Sonnen made comments stating that Armstrong gave himself cancer by using performance enhancing drugs. There's audio available of the interview where he says it (see video below).



Sonnen then appeared today on Jim Rome's radio program, and again reiterated that he hadn't made those comments.

"I've never spoken about people without a middleweight contract," he said on the show. "You will not see any footage of me saying anything about Lance Armstrong."

That's when Rome played the audio for Chael of the above segment. Sonnen's response?

"It sounded nothing like me."

Oh, but that's not all. He also said the person on that call, that did a 45 minute interview with Pepe, was an impersonator that "sounded like a guy with a Hispanic accent."

Let's be clear. The voice on that call with Larry Pepe is Chael Sonnen. He's continually gone further and further with his comments, and with Armstrong constantly battling negative publicity on this issue it's probably something which his legal team would be likely to go after Sonnen for.

Sonnen can claim all he wants that it wasn't him, but all he's doing now is lying to people's faces even more than he was doing before. This little game of his had already gone past the point of getting old, and now it's turned to insanely asinine.

At this point, you have to wonder whether fans even want to pay to see him get beat anymore. He started this line of talk months ago with people cheering him on for calling out Silva on his poor performances in the Octagon. He quickly turned it into people wanting to see him get his face smashed in, but now he's gone so far that people are starting to simply wanting him to go away. And if they're not interested enough in Silva alone it could lead to a much more tempered pay-per-view buyrate.

I'm sure Dana White has been happy with some of the publicity Chael's brought, and for most of what he's done to sell this fight; but there comes a time when too much is too much, and we've reached that point. There's one more press conference before the fight, so hopefully Sonnen hasn't saved his most ridiculous comments for last.

RELATED STORY: UFC QUOTABLES: Chael Sonnen says Lance Armstrong cheated and gave himself cancer: [CLICK TO READ ARTICLE]