MMA Quotes Round-Up Bonanza

That's right, it's time once again for another spectacular edition of B.C. MMA Fan's quotes round-up. Let's begin, shall we?

Chael Sonnen (23-10-1 [pictured left])'s incendiary comments about Anderson Silva (25-4) the other day, and the scathing response they elicited from "The Spider's" manager, Ed Soares, set the MMA media ablaze.

First Sonnen heaped up two full scoops of hate on Anderson Silva while appearing as a guest on MMAWeekly Radio:

“Who knows what Anderson’s doing. At the end of the day, who cares. If he wants to leave the division, leave the sport, who cares. Beat it, nobody tunes in to watch him anyways, and his little fake ‘I don’t speak English…You want me to let you in on a secret, Anderson Silva speaks perfect English. He just has such a low amount of respect for you and all the rest of the media that he pretends he doesn’t. I’ve had conversations with Anderson Silva in perfect English, and on top of that he’s so boring to listen to that he and his rocket scientist manager, Ed Soares, who is also about as exciting as watching grass grow, have decided that Ed is better on the mic than Anderson, so just let Ed do the talking…It’s quite ironic that all the media comes on and talks about how great this guy is for reasons that are completely un-understandable to me. How great Anderson Silva is, and all of us fighters are in the back going, ‘jeez, they’re out there massaging his ego, Anderson hates them so much, he pretends he can’t understand them,’…That guy’s no more the top fighter out there than Bigfoot is roaming the woods. That is an absolute myth, and all these guys can buy into it, but there’s a young man out in Portland, Ore., that is not signing up on that bandwagon…If Anderson ever signed to fight me, which is highly unlikely, he’ll be getting a verbal beating like you’ve never seen. And his language barrier won’t be the point of interest.”

It doesn't take a "rocket scientist manager" to poke holes in Sonnen's flimsy arguments, but Dr. Ed Soares, Ph.D decided to fire back just the same, also to MMAWeekly:

“I think Chael’s a really super nice guy and every time I’ve met the guy he’s always been really cool to me. That’s weird that he would say stuff on the radio, but I think at the end of the day, Chael’s not a dumb guy, he’s a pretty smart guy. I think no one will really pay attention to what he has to say unless he probably talks about Anderson…Anyone that has a mouth can say what they want. I don’t think people pay too much attention to what Chael does. Saying that Anderson’s boring or Anderson’s this, Anderson’s that, we don’t even need to go back and see what Chael has done. If you really want to analyze Chael’s career over the past couple years, he’s had some wins, but he said he didn’t tap against Paulo Filho. If the ref wouldn’t have stopped the fight, Paulo Filho would have his arm in Brazil with him…And when he beat Paulo Filho, he was 35 to 40 percent of a Paulo Filho and he took him to a decision. Then he went and fought Damien Maia, got submitted quick, and now he’s going to fight Nate Marquardt which Nate just ended up knocking out Damien Maia. I think Chael should be really focused on his fight that he’s got against Nate Marquardt because I can tell you right now that’s probably going to be the hardest fight of his life. I would put my money on Nate…I don’t know what he’s doing, but I would be keeping my mouth shut and in the gym training, especially training his stand-up."

As for the controversy, it is pretty clear that Sonnen intended to get a rise out of Silva, or at least out of the MMA blogosphere, in order to hype his potential future showdown with Anderson. Of course, as Soares aptly pointed out, that fight will only occur if Sonnen can get by Nate Marquardt (29-8-1) at UFC 109: Relentless, which most observers believe is highly unlikely. At least Sonnen wisely stopped short of actually saying he's a better fighter than Anderson, unlike the last time he want on an anti-"Spider" rant.

In the next quote, Dana White messes with the already hopelessly tortured heads of hardcore PRIDE fan-boys. These comments were made on Canoe.ca in response to the question of whether Zuffa might consider resurrecting PRIDE FC:

"You never know, anything is possible. I don’t want to say the PRIDE name is dead. It’s still a strong powerful brand. But the reality is that us running PRIDE in Japan, that completely fell a apart."

Kenny "I Finish Fights" Florian (12-4) took time away from his training and his ESPN broadcast duties to squeeze off a few high-calibre rounds of real-talk in Diego Sanchez' general direction in this interview with CagePotato.com:

Is there any satisfaction in seeing Diego decide that he can’t do it at lightweight and go up to welterweight again?

(Laughs) You know, I pretty much predicted that. The skill level at 155lbs is the best in the UFC, if you look across the board, in terms of well-rounded fighters. You are not going to come in to the UFC 155 division and start finishing guys right away. People see me doing it and what do they think I’m doing, just lying around not training? I train my ass off every single day to be able to do that and it’s not an easy thing to be able to finish guys at 155. That’s something I really pride myself on. The only guys, I think, at 155 that are consistently finishing people are me and BJ Penn. I think that takes a special skill to be able to do that. Not everybody can do that, I don’t promise to be able to do that all the time but that’s the way I fight and that’s the way I train to fight.

Diego thought he was going to be able to go out there and just smash people at 155. Not going to happen, Diego. The skill level is too good out there. You have to be very, very well rounded. He thought what he was able to do at 170, he was going to do even better at 155 and that’s just not the case. It just shows me the talent that is out there at 155. In my opinion, Diego just never looked great at 155.

As one of the voices of reason who accurately predicted that Diego would get completely shellacked by BJ Penn, I can't take issue with many of Florian's points. Although, the timing seems to lack a bit of Ken-Flo's usual class.

Canadian middleweight Travis Galbraith (17-6) discusses his upcoming fight against England's Tom "Kong" Watson at MFC 24 (Feb. 26th) with MMAJunkie.com:

"I understand he's a stand-up guy primarily, which plays good into my game. He's a tough guy. I let my coaches watch all the video they could find on him, and we've been working on what we think needs to be done to finish this fight quickly. I'm hoping that everything is going to work out the way it should. This is it.I'm pulling out all the stops. I've been doing MMA long enough to where I either need to go forward with it and make it everything and see how far it will carry me, or move on to something else. I need to get it done and make a decision from there. I have no concerns this fight. This is the best I think I'm going into a fight – the best prepared, the best conditioned. I feel mentally strong. I just don't see anything that I could be doing that I'm not doing right now. I'm doing what I need to do."

Jon Fitch (21-3) asked MMAFighting.com what else he could possibly need to do to earn a second welterweight title shot if he stops Thiago Alves (16-6) at UFC 111. Meanwhile, manny MMa fans live in continual disbelief that Fitch and Josh Koscheck (14-4) have the nerve to demand title shots while refusing to fight each other:

"If I stop [Thiago Alves], I don't see how they could deny me a shot at GSP. At that point I would have stopped someone twice who GSP couldn't finish in five rounds, so I think that's a very strong argument for me to get a title shot. We're both fighting for another crack at GSP, so we both have something big that we want."

"Mentally, Alves's matured a great deal in that time period. He was pretty young when we fought.... His wrestling defense is much better and he's harder to take down. He's stronger and I think he's matured physically. Maybe he's a little bit slower. We'll see ... I'm a much better athlete than I was a couple years ago. I'm a much improved fighter from when I first fought, and so is he."

Finally, old-school mixed martial artist and all around bad-ass dude, Don Frye (20-8-1), had some advice on MMAjunkie.com Radio for any legit martial artists who face aged professional athletes making their pro debuts... and it's not very nice:

"I tell you what: Anybody who fights an [expletive] like James Toney or Herschel Walker or Jose Canseco or any of them other [expletives] that come into our sport at their age should be required to take them down and break as many bones as possible on them and keep them crippled for six to eight weeks. I'd break both their [expletive] arms so they'd have to hire somebody to wipe their ass for the next six to eight weeks. It should be a requirement."