Chael Sonnen is now three days away from his Light Heavyweight Championship match against Jon ‘Bones’ Jones at UFC 159. Yesterday, we shared the pre-fight conference call, wherein Chael eschewed his traditional spew of wordy hatred to lovingly cradle Jon Jones’ reputation in his arms and gently kiss its forehead. We wondered what was up with Chael, and reader Iron Mike Sharpie put it best when he said he reads Sonnen’s comments as, “Please don’t put me in a coma, okay?”
That overwhelming sense of “what the f**k are you doing” continued on SportsCenter, where an interview with Sonnen started with his totally normal white person request to touch the reporter’s hair and ended in a WWE-style promo so sing-songy it could’ve come from the mouth of The Rock himself. You know, if Rock could say that many words in a row without having to stop and catch his breath.
Here’s the clip. Warning: If you are Jon Jones, this is somehow going to make you even less scared.
The “Chael Sonnen did something kinda racist” thing is obvious, so a lot of sites (like our friends over at Cage Potato) have taken the opposing, “don’t pretend like Chael Sonnen did something racist, liberal soapbox something something.” And yeah, I get it, Chael Sonnen asking to touch the black lady’s hair is more “Chael Sonnen” than “racist,” but for anyone reading who is not famous for being a weird asshole, asking to touch a black person’s hair and remarking on live television about how shocked you are that it is soft is probably not a thing you should do, okay.
We’ll give Sonnen a break here, though. He’s only got three more days to live, he can do whatever he wants.
