UFC: Would Chael Sonnen Be the Fan Favorite Against Michael Bisping?

As everyone has hopefully heard by now, everyone’s favorite MMA bad guy Chael Sonnen has called out Michael Bisping. 

Referring to “The Count” as “Michael Spitsbing,” Sonnen stated that “it’ll be a little tougher to knee ME in the head when I’m charging at him like a runaway train and mincing him through the fence like a boiled potato.”

Prior to his match with Jorge Rivera, Bisping stated that being labeled a trash talker was unwarranted, since he only talks down to opponents if they talk down to him first. 

To be fair to him, Bisping did keep the pre-fight war of words pretty tasteful on his end—making remarks such as “I'm a professional fighter; I'm not an idiot in the schoolyard, making up silly rhymes and jokes and making stupid videos.”

That being said, Bisping has easily solidified himself as the most hated man in all of MMA after his last match by first hitting Rivera with what many considered a blatant, illegal knee to the head and then by spitting at his corner once the fight was over. 

Which leads us to the question: would a fight between Sonnen and Bisping do the unthinkable and paint Sonnen as the good guy? 

Sonnen’s trash talk in the past has not even been close to as subtle as Bisping’s. 

In just the past six months, Sonnen has insinuated that Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva is a homosexual, that Lance Armstrong gave himself cancer by using performance enhancing drugs and claimed that he, himself has never been beaten by another middleweight. 

That last statement was prior to his title bout with Anderson Silva, but Sonnen had still lost to the likes of middleweights Demian Maia and Paulo Filho in the past few years.    

With that being said, there is no way fans could support Sonnen over Bisping—right?

Well, the adage that actions speak louder than words comes to mind. 

Whether one loves or hates how Sonnen hypes up a fight, one thing that is certain is that he has never used any dirty tactics while inside the cage.

Never has anything like Bisping’s illegal knee to Rivera, or spitting at Rivera's corner, occurred in Sonnen’s career. 

That's not to say that Sonnen is a saint. He did, for example, recently fail a drug test for elevated testosterone levels (too bad Lance Armstrong didn't chime in on that one). 

But still—in the eyes of many fans right now, he is the lesser of two evils when compared to Michael Bisping. Sonnen has always been a professional during and immediately after a fight. 

So does this mean it's time for a face-turn for Chael Sonnen?

Only time will tell, but this writer truly believes that the overwhelming majority of MMA fans want to see Chael Sonnen beat the hell out of Michael Bisping in the immediate future.