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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Chael Sonnen's been very good at garnering reactions from fans and fighters, but that almost spilled over last weekend at The Ultimate Fighter 17 Finale. Sonnen, who coached this season of the show opposite Jon Jones and was in Las Vegas for the Finale event, was nearly struck by a fan in the arena.
According to both he and UFC President Dana White, a Brazilian fan called him over as he was shaking hands and taking pictures with fans, then took a swing. He didn't land the shot, and was immediately dragged out by security, but he nearly got his hands on Sonnen.
"It was very quick, like those things typically happen," Sonnen said in an interview with MMAjunkie.com. "I was visiting with some fans, and a gentleman had started in on me. Ultimately, that's what it led to. I think a fan can do anything they want. I think they can heckle, a fan can boo, but they can't touch you. But the same thing goes for me. I can yell at a fan too, but you can't touch them. If you want to be a fan, you buy the ticket, and you can have any energy you want, whether it's positive or negative. And in this case it was negative, and he went a little too far."
"It was really quite interesting. He was caught literally a quarter-second before it would have landed. I barely saw it coming in before a gentleman named Kaya stepped in and caught it."
Sonnen said more than anything the incident caught him off guard, but he was firm that he wouldn't have fired back at the fan had that strike landed.
"We only compete in highly regulated and sanctioned matches," he said. "I'm not a fan of that, but if he would have connected, I would have turned the other cheek and walked away. I certainly wouldn't have engaged him.
"The guy seemed like a perfectly nice guy. He was an Anderson Silva fan. He was backing Anderson Silva verbally. For it to turn physical, yes, that was a surprise. But until that point, he just seemed like a guy with a passion for his favorite fighter.
Penick's Analysis: With how far some of Sonnen's rants have gone against Brazil and the people of Brazil, even outside of the fighters he's commented on, I'm surprised it's taken this long for a fan to take a swing. There's a lot of people out there with little impulse control who do things like that, and Sonnen's someone who clearly brings out impassioned reactions from people. It's not ok for a fan to take a swing at a fighter, of course, and it's a good thing we didn't need to find out how Sonnen would have reacted had he gotten hit, but the fact that it happened isn't really surprising.
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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