Jorge Masvidal has turned a media spat with Chael Sonnen right into a battle provide, doing it within the blunt type that has adopted him for many of his profession. On April 23, studies and social clips circulated displaying Masvidal going off on Sonnen throughout a podcast look and welcoming him to compete in Masvidal’s bare-knuckle MMA promotion, Gamebred FC. The rant got here after Sonnen mentioned Masvidal was “mendacity” about return talks with the UFC, a declare that clearly struck a nerve.
Masvidal’s response didn’t keep within the standard back-and-forth lane. He combined insults with a proper problem, tying Sonnen’s identify to Gamebred’s present push within the bare-knuckle MMA house. Masvidal’s firm will return in 2026 with event plans at heavyweight and light-weight, every tied to a $500,000 prize, and occasions scheduled within the Dominican Republic and Miami. That provides Masvidal an actual platform for the callout somewhat than a throwaway line for headlines.
Jorge Masvidal Calls Out Chael Sonnen
Jorge Masvidal mentioned:
“This motherf****r has some nerve. He’s transitioning into a girl. Now that he’s a lesbian, he thinks I can’t slap him. I can’t take this man critically – the best factor he did was faucet out to Anderson Silva, and he was on seven totally different PEDs.”
He then pushed the problem additional and connected it to his promotion:
“Chael, I’ve acquired a proposition for you. I’m going to beat the brakes off you. I’ll pay you to return over to my promotion, bare-knuckle MMA. I’ll go as much as heavyweight and beat the f***ing lesbian out of you.”
Sonnen has talked publicly prior to now about being approached as a backup possibility for the 2024 boxing match between Masvidal and Nate Diaz, and one report on the present dispute hyperlinks the 2 males’s historical past again to these sorts of remarks. Sonnen additionally stays one of many sport’s best-known talkers, so any direct problem involving him tends to unfold quick even when no bout is near official.
Masvidal’s shot about Anderson Silva and PEDs factors to an actual piece of Sonnen’s document. After UFC 117 in 2010, Sonnen examined constructive for elevated testosterone ranges following his loss to Silva, a case that grew to become one of the vital mentioned drug tales in MMA on the time.
For now, that is nonetheless a callout, not a booked battle. What is evident is that Masvidal used a present enterprise enterprise, a present feud, and Sonnen’s outdated controversies to create a headline that landed throughout MMA media in a single day. Whether or not Sonnen solutions with phrases or indicators on the dotted line is the subsequent a part of the story.
