Former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen had a teammate that once took winning at all costs to an insanely extreme level.
With a UFC Vegas 89 flyweight bout ending in a disqualification after Igor Severino bit Andre Lima last week, biting was fresh on Sonnen’s mind. During his reaction to Severino’s actions, Sonnen told a story about a teammate that once bit himself in a wrestling match and blamed it on his opponent.
“I have seen a lot of teeth marks in the sport of wrestling. You also can not bite somebody in wrestling. As a matter of fact, if you claim a guy bit you, including if the referee doesn’t see it, if there are bit marks the referee will disqualify that guy right away. It has become a little bit of a problem because a bite when I say it, and I think when your ears hear it, is defined specifically to somebody who intended to bite you,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel.
“In wrestling it’s not always that case. We have something called cross-face in wrestling. We have a number of things in wrestling where you would bring your arm, it would go right across the guy’s face, which means you would be taking your arm into the guy’s mouth,” Sonnen continued. “And if you continue to push and his teeth are exposed it’s going to show you those bite marks even if he never meant to do it and more importantly doesn’t clamp down. This got tested in wrestling a number of times where a kid would get up and say, ‘he bit me.’ You’d see the mark. There’d be blood. The referee who didn’t even see it would stop the match and disqualify the kid.”
Knowing the rules and that you’re disqualified for biting, someone could take advantage of the situation. Sonnen had a teammate do just that.
“I had a guy. My own teammate got put in a precarious position and bit himself, jumped up to his feet and tells the ref, ‘He bit me.’ The ref says, ‘what?’ He shows him the marks, which is what rule says you have to do, and the referee instantly disqualified the other guy,” Sonnen explained. “My buddy bit himself, told the referee that it was the other guy, showed him the marks, which is what the rule book says.”
Sonnen didn’t reveal the identity of his teammate.
