Brawl injuries forced postponement of Chael Sonnen vs. Wanderlei Silva

Quote :

But according to UFC president Dana White, not only was it the real thing, but the injuries "The Axe Murderer" sustained in the melee were what forced the bout to be pushed back from May to July.

"There's a bunch of idiots in the media saying, ‘That thing looks contrived,'" White said at Wednesday's TUF Nations Finale post-fight media scrum in Quebec City. "It was far from contrived. That thing was a disgusting display of what shouldn't happen, and if I was there it would have never happened.

"The fact that there were other people, even people holding camera in that f----- place and let that happen is just beyond belief. Then the kid who runs in and sucker-punched Chael from behind, it's just as bad as it can get."

White said that while he was angry about the incident when it occurred, he's got no choice now but to let it go.

"What happened was Wanderlei got hurt in that fight," White said following Wednesday's TUF Nations Finale. "He got double legged on the concrete and he hurt his back. He hurt his hand punching Chael in the head and he got injured. He couldn't fight on time because he got hurt in the fight f------- coaching a show. I'm done being angry now. I was angry when it happened. It's just disgusting. What are you going to do?"

http://www.mmafighting.com/2014/4/17/5624712/dana-white-brawl-injuries-forced-postponement-of-chael-sonnen-vs

Said the guy who would be the most likely person to instruct them to stage the fight in the first place.

If I were him and I tried to pass this whole thing off as real, this is exactly what I would do, too. Just for the sake of arguement, let's keep an open mind here for a second. Let's say Dana told them to stage the fight, likely for the purpose of generating interest in this season of TUF and Fight Pass in general. We all know the majority of UFC fans feel at least a little pissed-off and cheated by Fight Pass, so Dana likely knows that, too.
So he stages the fight, he mentions it several times before it airs (obviously to pique interest and get people to tune in), then when the fight "leaks" and everybody finally sees it, there's more than a few fans and media who immediately spot several factors that indicate it was a fake.
Imagine you're Dana at this point. Could you think of a worse PR nightmare than being caught staging something like this? People would be boycotting Fight Pass just out of spite! He probably figured people would just see it and go "Holy shit! This is crazy!". Never imagined in a million years people would see through it and expose it. But the whispers start getting louder, and just repeatedly denying it isn't going to stop the chatter. He has to do something drastic. He makes up this BS about them getting hurt during this fight, and oh boo-hoo, now we gotta make this heart-wrenching decision to push the fight out to a later date. What can he do, folks? Chael and Silva are just uncontrollable rabid dogs who couldn't be tamed, now we all have to suffer!

Except it's really not that big of a deal. The actual fight is still happening only a short time later than it was originally scheduled- which equates to Chael and Silva basically just getting a few weeks added onto their training camps- and the injuries almost certainly won't be documented or cause any detriment to these two in the long run (because they aren't real to begin with). And now nobody can question that the fight was staged, because Dana fed us this BS about how "he had no choice" but to move the actual fight to a later date because of this not-fake-at-all barnburner that happened between these two! No more spotlight on Dana and his failed attempt at pumping up Fight Pass!
Problem solved!


Well played, Dana!
Bravo!
Bravo!!!

http://www.bjpenn.com/coach-tuf-brawl-was-orchestrated3/

Now here we have this coach from Sonnen's team who says the fight was definitely orchestrated, but not by all parties involved.
He basically says that the production team knowingly put these two into position to get into a "brawl", which is probably why it looked so perfectly planned. He doesn't admit that Wanderlei and Chael were in on orchestrating it, but that's why I put the word "brawl" in quotations; the fact that it looks so set up to begin with- like the open-handed "punch" from Wanderlei and the ridiculously sloppy un-Chael like takedown from Sonnen that somehow worked perfectly- cant be ignored.
Given this new info, I think a few things are explained.
1) We now know why the cameramen seemed so calm and ready for this to happen. They were in on it.
2) We now know why the team members seemed so much more violent about it than Chael and Wanderlei. They didn't know it was staged (that's why production tried to do this without them in the room).

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/tuf-brazil-3-coaches-fight-185503501--mma.html


and looks like Dida is gone. The guy who suckered punched sonnen. No loss at all though. Lost his last 4 mma fights and a 1-4 kickboxing record. No loss at all.

Yeah this is all starting to come together pretty clearly now as far as what really happened and who knew about the fix.
It's pretty clear now that Dana didn't have a hand in it, and it's pretty clear that the fighters and assistant coaches didn't, either.
The production staff definitely set it all up, and I'm still betting Chael and Wanderlei were in on it, too.

The only thing that doesn't add up for me is that while the show was taping, and Dana was promoting it, he practically beamed about the "brawl" and how everyone needs to tune in and see it for themselves, but now he's acting like he's apalled by it and so dissapointed in Chael and Wanderlei.
Maybe Dana didn't have anything to do with setting it up (still, maybe he did), but his hypocrisy on the whole situation is disgusting.

I do agree some thing about this brawl just doesn't seem legit. Its not as ridicules as rampage/rashad but seems more staged than ken/tito.

if that makes any sense?

I agree that certain things seem staged to me but tbh I can't really decide. I totally agree that the fighters were not in on it. The production crew was, but I can't decide about Chael and Wandy.

I would definitely say no they were not - but the open hand slap from Wandy is just weird.

I would definitely say yes - but the way Chael was acting right before going to the floor seemed too genuine. He definitely had that nervous still trying to not fight tone in his voice that I dont think was staged. After he pushed Wandy away from him I kind of think he was expecting people to step in and then nobody came and he got nervous. "Wandy stop, just stop, stop" I would think if it were staged he would confidently be saying "come on right now" or something.

I can't decide.

Yeah the only reason I think Wandy and Chael were in on it is just the eye test from my point of view.
The Wandy slap.
The insanely sloppy TD from Chael that somehow worked perfectly.
The weird squaring off before actually engaging. Seriously, when does that ever happen in real life? Almost every single time there's an actual fight outside of an organized match, it's a shove followed instantly by chaotic scrambling and swinging, not a shove followed by both guys calmly taking two steps back and getting into fight stance.

I don't know, there's some blurry lines here for sure. Maybe Wanderlei knew, and thought Chael knew, but Chael didn't actually know? LOL!
I don't know, this is making my head hurt.