DAMN! They Were Good: How Chael Sonnen turned his career around to become a UFC Hall Of Famer

Chael Sonnen is set to be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, and so the MMA Fighting crew takes a look back at his extraordinary career, as DAMN! They Were Good celebrates “The Bad Guy.”

For the first half of Sonnen’s career, “The American Gangster” was an also-ran, a guy with an unexciting style who nobody cared about. He fell short in the UFC when he got the call and then came up short when he fought for the WEC middleweight title, and it looked for all the world like Sonnen would join the ranks of forgotten journeymen that fill MMA.

But then something happened.

Sonnen decided that anonymity wasn’t good enough, and he changed his stars, incorporating pro-wrestling style bombast to make himself marketable. His fighting style never changed, but his mic work did, and suddenly, Sonnen was the biggest thing in the sport, kicking up a rivalry with Anderson Silva that defined the early 2010s of MMA. And while Sonnen never ultimately won a major title in MMA, he did leave an indelible impression on the combat sports world.

What were our favorite moments and the best highlights from Sonnen’s career? How did Sonnen pull off this incredible turnaround? And who exactly is Homer Moore? All this and more are discussed on the latest episode of DAMN! They Were Good.

New episodes of the DAMN! They Were Good podcast come out biweekly and are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts. This week’s episode can be heard below.