LAS VEGAS – Chael Sonnen was curious to see if Ian Machado Garry could handle the heat going into UFC 296.
Garry (13-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) was scheduled to face Vicente Luque (22-9-1 MMA, 15-5 UFC) on Saturday’s main card opener at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, but ended up pulling out due to pneumonia.
Prior to his withdrawal becoming official, Garry did not show up to Wednesday’s media day, but his team claimed he would appear in Thursday’s pre-fight press conference. While the media day no-show was likely due to being ill, Sonnen wanted to see how Garry would have reacted to all the heat towards him.
“I thought that Garry had a lot of pressure on him, and how is he going to deal?” Sonnen told MMA Junkie on the World MMA Awards red carpet. “He’s always had the crowd eating out of his hand. I was in Boston for example, that crowd went crazy for him and O’Malley – but they went crazy.
“He was going to have the opposite experience. How is he going to do? Can he handle the boos? Not many people want to be heels because they can’t handle the boos, and I was just curious. It was going to be a very rare test. He was put in an interesting position. I’m disappointed we’re not going to see the fight.”
Sonnen pointed to Garry’s public relations team as the problem. He wasn’t a fan of Garry skipping out on media-related events such as media day and the press conference, and thinks he should have embraced the heel role by giving some sort of reaction.
“I just think there was a few ways to handle that,” Sonnen said. “I think Ian Garry’s got very good advice. He’s clearly had great coaches. Just by example: He’s a handsome guy, he’s well-spoken, he gets the game, his skills are top-shelf. His PR sucks. Not that it’s bad – it sucks. It’s terrible. I only share that because there’s only one thing you can’t do, which is nothing – which is what he did do.
“He could have showed up to the press conference, sit with a book. He could have set it up and walked out and the book just sits in his spot. He could have gone to the press conference, put a cigar in, put his feet up and read the book at the press conference and ignored the questions completely. He could have done anything but nothing.”
UFC 296 takes place Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN2 and early prelims on ESPN+.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 296.
