Chael Sonnen isn’t feeling the buzz for Jan Blachowicz vs. Alex Pereira.
Pereira (7-2 MMA, 4-1 UFC) makes his light heavyweight debut against former champion Blachowicz (29-9-1 MMA, 12-6 UFC) in the UFC 291 co-main event July 29 at Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
Both Blachowicz and Pereira hold wins over UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya,and could emerge as title contenders with a win. But Sonnen doesn’t see either fighter as a draw.
“From the department of ‘who cares’ comes Blachowicz vs. Pereira,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel. “Well, I don’t mean that to sound like a jerk, but you got two guys that don’t have the ability to bring interest to anything. They’re just not equipped with that. So you’ve got to understand you’re dealing with two narcissists, both Blachowicz and Pereira. I never met them. You’re dealing with two narcissists clinically.”
Although Sonnen acknowledges that the stakes are high for the matchup, he doesn’t see it as a compelling storyline for the average viewer.
“Along with that narcissism comes an idea that everybody knows what it is that you have done,” Sonnen added. “Everybody knows the significance of this fight. I could make this a really great spoiler, and I could do it really quickly. They narcissistically believe that I already have, and I don’t mean me, your intellectual superior Chael Sonnen. I’m talking just the average viewer.
“The average viewer has already put together that we have a guy who beat a guy (Adesanya) three times vs. the guy where they fought once, and it was pretty competitive, but he got taken down, and we got a world champion here vs. a former world champion up here. This guy’s first time coming up, and this guy’s known for the power on his feet, but this guy is as technical as they come. They think that the world knows that, and they don’t. The viewer that watches every single Saturday doesn’t find what I just said to be interesting.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 291.
