Chael Sonnen on UFC on FOX 2: Is He Right Image for MMA to Put on Network TV?

Chael Sonnen faces Michael Bisping tonight on UFC on FOX 2 and will easily overshadow the main event by the time they are done.

Even if the action in the cage doesn't match the anticipation both men have brought, the post-fight interview with the winner will leave most people buzzing about their next match.

It will make it harder for Rashad Evans and Phil Davis to entertain fans when Bisping or Sonnen open their mouths and shoot off whatever diatribe they have rattling around in their skulls.

The safe bet is Sonnen as Bisping doesn't seem to have the power to knock him out or the wrestling ability to keep the fight standing. Bisping might have underrated submission skills, but if he does, they are new and are something he has just developed.

So there is a good chance that Sonnen will win and call out Anderson Silva for a rematch. The interview in which he does it will be colorful and insulting in a way that will make first-time viewers scrunch their foreheads in disbelief.

Sonnen will grab a page from pro wrestling and use this time to cut a colorful promo that will easily add another 100,000 buys to the rematch with Silva. It will be good business for the UFC.

It just may not be good business for MMA.

Even if the sport is evolving into something else then what fans first saw years ago it all started with the idea that martial artists wanted to see which style was best. It was pure in how it wanted to test disciplined warriors who sought wisdom and perfection in their craft.

Now, many competitors seek endorsement deals and sponsors instead of honing their techniques. Fighters like Lyoto Machida seem to be a dying breed and fans are inundated with people like Chael Sonnen.

For MMA as an entertainment brand and a growing economic force, it is the best thing possible.

But for a sport that should be reminding its fans of karate, submission wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and judo, it doesn't help.

Sonnen even said in his first interview with Michael Landsberg on OTR that he didn't understand what arts in MMA stood for. That was probably hyperbole to make sure the interview was watched, but first-time viewers of the sport won't know that.

There will be people tuning in to network TV and watching a larger-then-life character spout off about whatever he feels like and color their image of what MMA is for the first time.

It will get the pay-per-view that Sonnen appears on a lot more buys.

It will get the sport a lot more followers.

And it will further distance itself from the fighters like Royce Gracie who made the sport great and focused on the martial arts part of MMA.

Matthew Hemphill writes for the MMA and professional wrestling portion of Bleacher Report.  He also hosts a blog elbaexiled.blogspot.com which focuses on books, music, comic books, video games, film and generally anything that could be related to the realms of nerdom.