Chael Sonnen's Kayfabe War Of Words Sparks Outrage

In case you didn't already know, there's a big difference between Chael Sonnen the man, and Chael Sonnen the pro-wrestlingesque persona that Sonnen wears while he's hyping up his upcoming fight with Anderson Silva at UFC 117.

The real life Sonnen is a highly intelligent and articulate fighter, Realtor and politician. Sonnen has an incredible understanding of politics, marketing and the politics of business, especially the fight business.

These qualities made Sonnen the perfect speaker to articulate the dispute between Matt Lindland and the UFC in Matt Lindland's documentary, Fighting Politics. In this documentary, Sonnen showed his understanding of how the UFC can build up a persona, how fights are sold, and perhaps most important, the politics of the fight business.

In fact, Sonnen really stole the show on the documentary with his insightful, yet truth-bending commentary.

The pro-wrestling persona that Sonnen has adopted is everything that the real Sonnen is, but he's also an over-the-top caricature who is either an obvious satire on lying politicians, or a textbook case of dissociative identity disorder.

The things that have been coming out of Sonnen's mouth lately have been ridiculous when they haven't been outrageous, and he mixes in just enough truth to make you feel like he's being sincere.

The most well-documented controversies involve Sonnen's alleged Twitter account. When The Huffington Post ran a story on remarks that were seen as racist or xenophobic, Sonnen denied that the Twitter account belonged to him, although he seems to be admitting ownership at least accidentally .

Yahoo!'s Kevin Iole got more to the point in a recent article where he makes no debate over the Twitter account—it's Sonnen's.

The lies don't end there, of course.

In interviews designed to hype the fight, Sonnen insists that he's beaten every middleweight he's ever fought, and Silva hasn't. Without picking apart Sonnen's record, one needs to look no further back than his recent loss to Demian Maia to know that his statement is false.

In perhaps the most bizarre turn yet, Sonnen railed against Lance Armstrong in a radio interview for supposedly giving himself cancer through performance enhancing drugs.

Of course, Sonnen has denied ever giving this interview.

The truth is that what I've characterized as lies probably doesn't actually live up to reality.

As already said, Sonnen's caricature is a lot more like a pro-wrestling persona than anything else. Therefore, what Sonnen says boils down not to lies, but rather, to kayfabe.

Sonnen's statements that have at times bordered on racist and homophobic (although Sonnen makes fun of the term homophobia) hardly go further than the kinds of things Bret Hart had to say during his turn as an anti-American heel.

Therefore, while what Sonnen has been saying may seem to be outrageous, I'd advise those who take issue with it to recognize it for the kayfabe that it is and tune it out.

Or, you can just chuckle along, because you know that Sonnen is.

Here are some videos from Fighting Politics that show Sonnen's great understanding of how the MMA business works.

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