Rising up from his stool to enter the fray for the fifth round, Chael Sonnen stood upon the precipice. After having been written off by most everyone but himself, Sonnen was a single round away from the promised land. One round away from exorcising the demons of being a perennial bridesmaid, a lesser light in his Team Quest sphere, often in the shadow of the likes of Lindland and Henderson. His absurd-ist level of self confidence had willed him to this moment. It had been a long, lonely road to that point for the Oregonian pugilist.
I will admit that I had essentially written off Sonnen as an entity at 185 after his loss to Demian Maia. Up to that point Sonnen’s career had been a solid if unremarkable affair. Bouncing between 185 and 205, Sonnen had built a more than decent record, but hardly one that placed him among the elite in the sport. Sonnen had a come from ahead loss to Paulo Filho, followed in quick order by a hollow victory to a “lights are on but nobody’s home” Filho in their rematch. Soon after his win over Filho in the now shuttered WEC 185 division, he was ushered into the UFC and summarliy disposed of in short order by Demian Maia by sub. Sonnen had been a case of unrealized potential over his career, undone by the fatal flaw of submission defense. With the loss, the die had seemingly been cast as to Sonnen’s chances of competing at the highest levels at middleweight. Sonnen entered his fight with Dan Miller on a downturn, an afterthought, if thought of at all. With Miller having some nice sub skills, and Chael having to lose 36 lbs in 22 days as a late replacement, prospects for Sonnen were bleak, but a funny thing happened. Sonnen won. And then he kept on winning. Faced with a Yushin Okami that was firmly ensconced in the MW Top 5, Sonnen defied the odds again, dominating the Japanese star in route to a decisive win. Faced with an upswing in his fortunes, he was placed against Nate Marquardt, in a bout that no reasonable observer expected him to win. Nate the Great would get the win in route to getting his much sought after rematch with Middlwweight kin Anderson Silva. Or so we thought. Again he dominated his opponent, making the improbable possible. I won’t pretend to be a great prognisticator of Sonnen’s rise, I picked against the guy at every step of the way.
In the course of just a few fights, Sonnen had resurrected a career that had seemingly run aground on the shoals and earned a title shot at Silva. Sonnen’s march to a championship tilt wasn’t one neatly orchestrated, like say a Dan Hardy. Nor was it one met with great fanfare or adulation. It was the Cinderella rise of a fighter with the personality and likability of the wicked stepsister. In the absence of anyone having faith in his abilities or efforts, Sonnen had created his own reality, willed his own destiny. Sonnen’s monsoon of pre-fight hype sold the fight, but also served to do what few thought possible. The caustic tone of Sonnen’s propaganda was able to turn Anderson the Court Jester of Abu Dhabi into the man that would give the brash American his comeuppance, turning Silva from a pariah to savior in some people’s eyes.
As Sonnen came out for the fifth round Saturday night, he would get Silva down shortly into the round, and victory was just five minutes of riding time away. As we all know now, Chael had his greatest foible, his sub defense, come to the fore once again. Sonnen’s crestfallen look in the cage afterwards spoke to a fighter assigned a cruel but inevitable fate. I won’t ask you to feel sorry for Sonnen. In his months long press parade leading up to his shot against Silva, Chael said and did too many loathsome things to really have one extend him that sympathy. But his story of personal redemption lost as it was just within grasp is just as enthralling to me as that of Silva pulling his win out of near certain defeat. There is as much story to be told with shadow as there is with light, as much as the triumph is heralded, often lost in the mix and shunted aside is the tragedy. One of my favorite quotes is by Heywood Broun -“The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.” It is a narrative that I have used before, noticeably with Keith Jardine. Sonnen in the wake of his loss was a tragic figure, but a less than empathetic one to most, and that view sells the entirety of the moment short. Viewing the result of the fight as Sonnen getting his just desserts is one way to view the conclusion, but hardly the only correct one.