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Round two: Political web site Huffington Post goes after Chael Sonnen
By Zach Arnold | June 14, 2010
Update (6/14): The same Huffington Post columnist is after Chael Sonnen again, this time nailing Sonnen for the claims that he supposedly doesn’t have a Twitter account.
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A lefty political site going after a conservative politician (and vice versa) is nothing new. So, it should be no surprise that Chael Sonnen is drawing heat for his Tweets about Anderson Silva. It’s the political season, which means hyperbole all the way around, and now Sonnen is being labeled for his ‘racist’ and ‘xenophobic’ remarks.
Chael’s online messages — great for selling fights, but not great for winning elections. (Not that he has a great shot of winning his election, anyways, in the deep blue Portland area.)
Finally, it feels like there is a pulse in media coverage and interest for UFC 115
Although it’s a faint one.
Are these really the sort of media headlines you want heading into an event that needs all the hype it can get to convince people that it’s not a waste of time?
- MMA Fighting: Does Chuck Liddell still have anything left?
- MMA for Real: Has Chuck Liddell pulled the wool over your eyes?
- Yahoo Sports: Mirko Cro Cop forthright about his UFC troubles
- MMA Fighting: Chuck Liddell faces a problem as old as prizefighting itself at UFC 115
- The Vancouver Sun: Scalpers losing money from ticket prices dropping on UFC 115
- Heavy: The future of MMA in Vancouver is a-go — but with caveats
Earlier on the site I alluded to the conference call that the Nevada State Athletic Commission had yesterday regarding their drug testing policies. Leland Roling asks a very good question — are MMA & boxing fans’ wallets the solution to more progressive drug-testing policies?
A couple of days ago on the site, I linked to an article written by Michael Kaplan about the Fertitta Family coming out as ‘winners’ in their bankruptcy proceedings. If you read the comments section on that post, you saw links to Google Cache where the editor’s notations were revealed and those notations tore the writer to shreds. Well, the writer is back with his second attempt for an article.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Before this gets bombarded with “LIGHTEN UP IT WAS A JOKE!” comments, let me say I don’t think what he said was intentionally racist and certainly not as offensive as, in recent headlines, Rand Paul’s views on race relations or Indian-American Nikki Haley being called “raghead” by an opponent. But still, he cannot have it both ways. Either he gets to do the shock-jock routine screwing up punchlines to sell pay per views, or he stays politically correct in his promos so he can have a political future. Because lord knows his day job is ammo enough for his opponents.
But he’s only running for office as a publicity stunt so I don’t think he really cares if he wins or not.
At first I feared the Huffington Post article would resort to anti-MMA cliches in an effort to discredit Sonnen as a political candidate on the basis that he is a fighter. I was relieved to see the article attacks him not for being a fighter, but for his racist/homophobic remarks, which are unnacceptable for any politician, athlete or public figure in this day and age. He will pay for those comments doubly, at the ballot box and in the cage.
I don’t think Chael actually runs that twitter. He is not a big fan of the internet.
If this is Cory Butcher, it would behoove people to read this post.
Ed. — Care to fill us in?
Cory Butcher trains over at Team Quest. Knows the guys. Appears kinda randomly on the internet when it comes to MMA talk these days, but if its him, I’d believe it.
I visit HP daily. It’s an extremely liberal website. Sometimes they go over the top in their slant. Personally, I enjoy the website because they cover a lot of stuff the mainstream ignores, despite it being important. But you need to take the wesite with a grain of salt.
What a hack that journalist is.
Not only does he fail to contact Sonnen himself (opting instead to have a third party do his legwork), he then rejects the explanation he got from that third party source out of hand.
The guy obviously wanted to do a hatchet job and was going to do it regardless of what Chael said (or didn’t say).
Interesting on the secondary market ticket prices to UFC 115 going down…I’m going to be in Vancouver this weekend, I might have to check out the fights if I can pick up a good deal.
You’t ba able to Gaij depending on what you consider a good deal. My buddy has family up there and he just got four tickets for $125. No clue where he’s sittin.
Sick…I was thinking I’d pay up to $150-200 depending on the seats.
I’d be willing to pay more if there was really something I wanted to see, but I’m already going to see Lesnar-Carwin so it’s not like I’ve got a real hard-on to go to this one.