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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=243131" target="_blank">
Columnist: Sonnen an "ultimate racist"?
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<a href="/go=news.detail&gid=243131" ><img class="photo" src="http://img.mixedmartialarts.com/method=get&rs=70&q=75&x=18&y=14&w=310&h=165&ro=0&s=B4C4DC5D-1D09-6BFC-E553408C22FF7C5E.jpg" /></a>
<strong class="ArticleSource">[huffingtonpost.com]</strong>
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What we do know about Chael Sonnen is that he is the number one contender for the Ultimate Fighting Championship's (UFC) middleweight title and a Republican nominee for the Oregon State Legislature. In the UFC, Chael Sonnen has become better known for vitriol and increasingly racist sounding messages on twitter than his fighting ability. Now I am waiting for these xenophobic and scathing public pronouncements to bring him infamy in the political world where he is also competing.
Sonnen has become famous in the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) world through a twitter account that has been making increasingly outrageous and sometimes racist statements. On twitter.com/sonnench there are memorable tweets such as: "I'm a gangster from Oregon"... "Anderson, [Chael Sonnen's next MMA opponent] you are going to be on your back more than a pornstar with a mortgage"... and what I find most offensive "Ed [a Brazilian American MMA manager], pray to whatever Demon effigy you prance and dance in front of with your piglet tribe of savages that I decide not to CRUCIFY you."
I see this last tweet as racist and xenophobic and was wondering how a candidate of a major party for the State Legislature was getting away with this. So I reached out to some Oregon press asking them why they haven't challenged this candidate on this type of talk. A reporter I emailed said he would take up the story. A couple of days ago he emailed me and said that Sonnen denied that he ever made the statements and that the twitter account is a fake one.
This has amazed me. Almost every major MMA website has quoted for months from this now allegedly fake twitter account and commented on the derogatory statements attributed to Sonnen, yet I have not seen one public denial of the twitter account or the xenophobic statements. It looks very suspicious that Sonnen, only when a story is being written that could have negative consequences to his political career, quietly denies these widely cited comments.
It is widely believed that a major reason Sonnen got to fight Anderson Silva for the middleweight championships is because of his trash talking but now we are to believe that one of the most cited sources for Sonnen's verbal assaults has nothing to do with him. In any professional political campaign if someone is posing as the candidate and making highly quoted and offensive statements, the campaign would quickly and publicly deny and condemn such statements. It is time that Chael Sonnen and his campaign make clear where they stand.
As a whole I don't care what fighters say, as long as they are professional in the Octagon, but a professional politician should be held to much higher standards. Chael Sonnen has proven in the UFC that he is a great fighter. In politics he is proving to be just another politician trying to have it both ways. I guess we will see in November if this ultimate fighter can win political office by being an ultimate faker.