Chael Sonnen vs. Wanderlei Silva
Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva were mortal enemies by the time their fight was scheduled for UFC 175, and so when it emerged that ‘The Axe-Murderer’ had been pulled from the fight his rival couldn’t wait to dish the dirt about what had led to the fight collapsing.
“Wanderlei has operated his entire career under the shadow of suspicion that he was using performance enhancing drugs,” Sonnen declared on the UFC Tonight show on FOX Sports 1.
“…Not only did he fail his test, he refused to take the test, and as you know a refusal is equal in the eyes of the commission to a failure. He ran from the test, Kenny, and I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean they came to his gym and he literally ran.”
Of course Sonnen was far from an angel himself, having already served a years suspension after testing positive for testosterone, but that didn’t stop him continuing to put his rival on blast.
“I don’t think he will ever fight again. He can’t be trusted again,” Sonnen told Combate.
“If something good happened this week is that all my suspicions of the cheating by this guy throughout his career turned out to be true.”
However, Sonnen’s holier-than-thou criticism of Silva blew up in his face just a few weeks later when it emerged that he had also failed a pre-fight drugs test for the fight.
Despite his initial denials of any wrongdoing, he tested positive for HGH, EP and hCG, leading to him being suspended for two years and being terminated from his UFC and FOX Sports broadcasting duties.