UFC 148: Sonnen Says Anderson Is Like Mike Tyson, but He's Also a Wimp

File this one under the "not sure if serious" department: Chael Sonnen says that Anderson Silva truly is the Mike Tyson of our generation. But he also says some more stuff:

"

You hear those things but they told us that about Mike Tyson too and what a wimp that guy turned out to be when he finally got some real competition. He’s kind of like the Mike Tyson of our era where they say certain things but at the end of the day when they lock that cage door he’s not going to have a friend and he’s not going to have a two-by-four and I’m sure he could use either one when I get my hands on him.

"

Mike Tyson was undefeated for five years, and he wasn't fighting scrubs during that stretch run. Also? He was absolutely and utterly terrifying during that time period.

Nobody in this world would argue that Tyson was not the baddest dude on the planet during his heyday in the 1980s. Tyson was 37-0 when he was finally defeated by Buster Douglas in 1990, and the vast majority of those came by utterly vicious knockouts, often in the first or second round.

Mike Tyson wasn't a wimp. But I get that he's a sympathetic character right now, even after all of the legal trouble he went through, so taking pot shots at him might help get you a little bit of publicity. 

Anderson Silva? He's not a wimp. Nobody that steps in that cage for a living is a wimp. Sonnen knows this, so we can file this one under "just saying stuff" as well. 

But he's also not the Mike Tyson of our generation. If Silva was known the world over and was a truly legitimate sporting star in the eyes of the mainstream, then he might be viewed as Tyson-like. As it is, he's just the scariest man in professional cage fighting. And hey, that still stands for something.