Chael Sonnen (right) is considered a heavy underdog against Jon Jones . (Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)

SI.com analysts Loretta Hunt, Jeff Wagenheim and Jon Wertheim provide their predictions for UFC 159, which takes place Saturday (10 p.m. ET) and will be blogged on SI.com.

Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen

WAGENHEIM: When the time comes, Chael P.’s music will start to play, he’ll put on his short pants and go to work. And as soon as the guy in the snake suit moves out of the way, he’ll put his head down, walk across the cage and put Jon Jones on his prissy little … oh, wait, I’m describing the fight as it plays out in Sonnen’s melodramatic fantasy narrative, not the way it really will.

A more realistic, if less infomercial-ish scenario: Sonnen comes out boxing and moving forward, and at the first glimpse of one of Jones’s skinny legs, moves in for a takedown try. If he gets it, the crowd will go crazy and we’ll get a rare look at the “Bones” bottom game. Does Jon have the jiu-jitsu chops to become the latest to submit a guy whose walkout music should be “Taps”? Chael is not known for inflicting much damage while smothering an opponent, so it’d be interesting to see if Jones would put those treacherous elbows of his to use and be the ground aggressor. Or would he just work his way back to his feet?

If, on the other hand, Sonnen fails on his takedown attempt, it will be an ingloriously short night for the unworthy challenger. Jones by KO.

HUNT: Jones by TKO.

WERTHEIM: Put simply, it’s hard come up with a conceivable scenario in which Jones loses this fight. He’s superior on virtually every dimension — If he’s not Sonnen’s equal as a wrestler, he comes awfully close — he’s younger,  more athletic and will be the crowd favorite. The best Sonnen can hope for: a respectable showing will suggest that he, in fact, earned this opportunity and didn’t simply talk/market himself into a title shot. Jones by TKO.

Michael Bisping vs. Alan Belcher

WAGENHEIM: If you spend a few minutes around these men, as I did on Thursday, it’s hard to picture Belcher winning this fight. Bisping is so supremely confident that he speaks of his opponent as if he were a yokel from Double-A ball who will be unable to get a piece of the Brit’s major-league playoff heater. And Belcher is, well, low-key and thoughtful and a little bemused by the leadup to what he acknowledges as the biggest fight of his career. Is the man with the tattoo of “The Man in Black” on his arm really in over his head? Tough to say, but I’m going to go with no. I think he’s going to give “The Count” a fight he’ll remember. Belcher might even beat him. But I’ve got to go with Bisping. This is the type of fight he’s won for all of his career (only to lose when he’s another step or so closer to the pot of gold). Bisping by decision.

HUNT: Belcher has the heavier hands (and kicks, for that matter), but Bisping can win this if he plays it smart, mixing up his punches with takedowns like he did against Brian Stann last September. Bisping by decision.

WERTHEIM: One hopes the fight lives up to the considerable advance trash talk. While it’s not all-out desperation time, Bisping is 34 now and has lost two of his last three fights. In Belcher, he gets a UFC veteran with a battery of skills and deceptive power. If both fighters are willing to stay on their feet, this has TKO potential. If it goes to the ground, we could have five rounds or stall-and-sprawl. Either way, I pick Bisping by decision.

Roy Nelson vs. Chieck Kongo 

WAGENHEIM: Kongo has the power to test Nelson’s hard-as-a-mulleted-rocker chin. But Cheick is known to make mistakes, and Roy is known to capitalize on them. Nelson by KO.

HUNT: Though Nelson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, could devour Kongo on the mat, he’ll likely stand with the chiseled Frenchman, who is yet to amount to the powerhouse fighter his appearance suggests he’d be. Nelson by TKO (R2 or R3).

WERTHEIM: You love Roy Nelson or you hate him, but have to admire both the durability and the unlikely skill set of Big Country. He won’t win any sculpted physique contests, but he can win fights — in a variety of ways. In Congo, he faces a veteran who seems to lose when he’s on the verge of a breakthrough; and win when he’s on the verge of being written off. Look for a TKO — and potential KO/fight of the Night — but I’ll say it’s Nelson who, like his belly, comes up big. Nelson by TKO.

Phil Davis vs. Vinny Magalhaes

WAGENHEIM: If Davis wants to make another go at the top of the light heavyweight division, he simply cannot slip up. Or tap out. Davis by decision.

HUNT: This one will depend on the superior wrestler Davis, who can rack up points with takedown after takedown, as long as he doesn’t dawdle inside the Brazilian’s dangerous guard for too long. Davis by decision. 

WERTHEIM: His nickname notwithstanding, Mr. Wonderful doesn’t often impress. A rangy wrestler and methodical fighter, Davis likes to do what’s necessary to win, seldom taking advantage of an inevitable reach advantage. Magalhaes looked good in his UFC return last year, but can he make inroads against a superior wrestler? The guess here: no. Davis by a (boring) decision.

Jim Miller vs. Pat Healy

WAGENHEIM: If you’re looking for aesthetics, change the channel. This ain’t going to be pretty. It isn’t, either. Miller and Healy both are grinders who close distance. When they meld into one, I expect the Jersey guy to grind just a little bit better. Miller by decision.

HUNT: Miller will have a significant edge in speed everywhere and Healy’s strong suit, his boxing, isn’t dynamic enough to catch the hometown favorite. Miller By submission.

WERTHEIM: Not dissimilar fighters, UFC veteran tough guys with submission-based ground skills and some power. Fighting in front of a home crowd, Miller, a New Jersey native, should prevail. Miller by decision.

UFC president Dana White hopes to ban testosterone replacement therapy from MMA. (AP)

MONTREAL — From Chael Sonnen to Forrest Griffin, Frank Mir to Dan Henderson, Vitor Belfort to Rampage Jackson and beyond, mixed martial artists at the sport’s highest level have successfully persuaded state athletic commissions to OK medical exemptions for them to use testosterone replacement therapy.

But Dana White has a different message for those fighters: “If you have to use TRT, you’re probably too old to be fighting.”

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Jon Jones will defend his light heavyweight title in April. (Dustin Bradford/Icon SMI)

The second the cameras stopped rolling, UFC fighter Chael Sonnen turned to Jon “Bones” Jones and slapped him on the knee.

“I can’t believe you did that! How could you?!” Sonnen joked, acting not unlike a married couple. Or, at the very least, friends.

Conducting an interview in the Sports Illustrated studio, Jones had just given away one of the results of a yet-to-be-aired episode of FX’s The Ultimate Fighter, and there would have to be a re-take.

Having spent so much time together in recent weeks taping The Ultimate Fighter, the days of Sonnen trash-talking Jones seem too long gone. Despite the fact that they are preparing to fight each other on April 27, they really do seem like friends.

So are they actually?

“Yeah we are [friends],” Sonnen said. “The single most disappointing part about going through this coaching process was finding out what a nice and genuine and passionate person that he is. [Spending so much time with someone] is really a recipe for disaster. Most of the time tensions fly… but for whatever reason Jon’s and my personality really hit it off.”

Jones does not entirely agree with such a flowery characterization, though.

“Oh no, me and Chael are not friends,” he quickly interjects. “We’re far from friends. We’re definitely more friendly than I would have expected, but that’s just my nature – I’m a friendly person.”

Whatever the status of their relationship, the fact remains that they are three months away from meeting in the octagon.

Jones has a belt to hold on to — a belt that Sonnen covets dearly. Expect all niceties to be spared.

—R.J. Rico

Chael Sonnen (right) was last seen getting dominated by Anderson Silva at the main event of UFC 148. (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)

Remember that fake UFC championship belt a mischievous Chael Sonnen used to sling over his shoulder for press conferences and television appearances in the contentious leadup to his July rematch with Anderson Silva? You know, the one that he impishly told an interviewer on ESPN was proof that he was the real middleweight champion?

Well, let’s pull it out of the closet and dust it off. That plastic-and-pleather strap is the one that rightfully ought to be put up for grabs next April 27 when Sonnen challenges once again for the UFC championship. This time at light heavyweight, though.

Seriously?

Yep, this is not another Chael media ploy. The UFC actually announced on Tuesday that Sonnen, who has competed in the fight promotion’s 205-pound weight class exactly one time — and that was seven years ago and he lost — will challenge Jon Jones after the two serve as coaches on the 17^th season of The Ultimate Fighter.

Jones need not bother to bring along the shiny brass-and-leather belt that he’s been proudly wearing for the last 19 months, the one he acquired by knocking out a champion and in the time since has defended against four former titlists. That belt signifies something earned, something extraordinary, something real. So “Bones” should leave it home in the trophy case. When he steps into the octagon next spring to take on a middleweight fighter with a heavyweight mouth, the fake plastic belt will suffice for the fake title defense.

That is not to deny that the next several months will be a lot of laughs. Chael is at this very moment locked in a windowless room with a team of joke writers brainstorming a Top 10 list for Letterman and five minutes of couch chatter for Leno.

And there’s no doubt that Dana White and Co. will benefit from this arrangement, which first was reported by The Los Angeles Times and later was confirmed by the UFC. The Ultimate Fighter will get a much-needed boost in ratings, and that springtime pay-per-view, featuring two of the organization’s top draws, is sure to do big numbers.

Maybe that’s good enough for the UFC: a financial boon generated by a dud of a fight.

Yes, a dud.

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Jon Jones denied responsibility for UFC 151′s cancellation. (ZUMPRESS.com)

TORONTO — The dance begins with one fighter walking out onto the stage, stripping down to his skivvies and stepping onto the scale. When his weight is announced, he flexes for the crowd, then moves off to the side and dresses while his opponent walks out, strips, weighs in, flexes, dresses. The two meet at center stage, face to face, fists up, striking a combative pose for the cameras. And after a dozen shutter clicks they’re done, off to rehydrate. Next set of fighters, please?

There may be no element of a mixed martial arts event more choreographed than the weigh-ins.

So how did light heavyweight champion Jon Jones end up having an off-the-script moment Friday afternoon after stepping off the scale?

It came about when Jones found himself staring into the eyes of not one but two people ready to go face to face with him. One was Vitor Belfort, who’ll be his opponent in the main event of UFC 152 on Saturday night at the Air Canada Centre (10 p.m. ET, PPV). The other was Dana White.

The UFC president and his 205-pound megastar had been sparring verbally for weeks, ever since Jones, upon being notified nine days prior to UFC 151 that challenger Dan Henderson was injured, turned down replacement opponent Chael Sonnen. The UFC ended up cancelling the Sept. 1 event — a first in the 11 years White has been running the show — and a fired-up White went on the offensive, calling Jones “selfish and disgusting” and his trainer/adviser/guru, Greg Jackson, “a [expletive] sport killer.”

As this weekend’s event neared, with Jones having been added to the top of the bill, he and White indicated that they would meet face to face here in Toronto to clear the air. The meeting was to take place just prior to the weigh-ins. So all eyes were on Jones as he stepped off the scale. Would he and White shake hands or even embrace, an indication that the cold war was over? Or would an icy chill pervade the stage set up atop a hockey rink at the old Maple Leaf Gardens, telling us that Dana might not have renewed his membership in the Jonny Bones Fan Club?

What we saw instead from Jones was an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty. This phenom fighter who never hesitates to attack inside the octagon seemed to waver when he spotted White. Then he smiled, White smiled, even Belfort smiled, and the choreography resumed.

What did it all mean? It meant that Jones and White had not yet met. They apparently planned to do so a few minutes later. And say what? “None of your business,” White responded when asked that very question in a Fuel TV interview following the weigh-ins.

We can at least surmise that the discussion explored areas of disagreement. A case in point: At a Thursday press conference, Jones spoke respectfully of the boss — “Dana White is awesome, man” — but steered clear of accepting responsibility for the UFC 151 fiasco. “I have actually zero power to cancel an event,” he said. “When I was actually talking to Dana and [UFC chairman/CEO] Lorenzo [Fertitta] about accepting the Chael Sonnen fight, they never told me if I didn’t accept the fight that they were going to cancel the event.”

It would have been interesting to hear White respond to that, but he was absent from the press conference, laid up at his hotel with an episode of Ménière’s disease. But in the Fuel TV interview, Dana had his say. “I don’t think he would have said that if I was there,” said White. “So today we’re going to be face to face and we’ll see what he says and what he doesn’t say. The fact that he says that he didn’t know that the show would get cancelled is false. I did tell him that the show would be cancelled.”

And with that, White headed off to a windowless room with his light heavyweight champ. And then? Nothing. Nada. Not a word. (OK, chief, you can deactivate the Cone of Silence now.) My colleague from Yahoo! Sports, Kevin Iole, texted White to ask about the meeting and got this terse text back: “It went well.” Other than that, White, who posts his thoughts on Twitter about as often as he takes a breath, has gone quiet. So has Jones, unless we can read something into his only post-meeting tweet, a quote attributed to Michael Jordan: “Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”

So stay tuned. Like any long-running soap opera, there’s always another episode to come.

—Jeff Wagenheim

Anderson Silva pounced on Chael Sonnen in Round 2 in moving to 30-4. (Mark J. Rebilas/US PRESSWIRE)

Five things we learned from Anderson Silva’s second-round TKO victory over Chael Sonnen in Saturday’s rematch at the MGM Grand Garden Arena …

1. A slip turned this fight around. The Chael Sonnen-Anderson Silva rematch started a lot like their first fight. Sonnen dominated the first round and was even in a good position for the last minute but couldn’t get a submission in. Things changed in the second: Silva blocked a few tough takedown attempts, Sonnen attempted a spinning kick – and slipped. It was over. Silva pounced, hit him with a killer knee to the body. That did enough damage; Silva didn’t let up, ending it with a TKO in the 1:55 of round two.

2. Silva is in the discussion for the best mixed martial artist ever. Silva’s last win over Sonnen wasn’t a fluke, but he was dominated before winning on the late submission. This time Silva didn’t let it get that far. He had one small opening after Sonnen’s slip and essentially ended it there. He’s defended his title 10 times, a UFC record. The man hasn’t lost since a DQ in 2006 in Japan. He’s nearly unstoppable.

3. Tito Ortiz lost, but went out like a Hall of Famer. It looked like Tito Ortiz might get a KO in his final round. He felled Forrest Griffin early in the third with a killer left hook — “I was lost for a second,” Griffin said — but Griffin rolled through after the punch and came on late in the third round to win a unanimous 29-28 decision in their rubber match.

The crowd booed the decision, but Griffin landed way more strikes — even if Ortiz hit the highlight-reel punches. Ortiz was clearly gassed in the final two minutes of the fight and Griffin probably cemented his victory there even though he wasn’t able to put him away at the end.

4. UFC delivered on the undercard. The UFC promoted this card like the second coming. Chael Sonnen called it “the biggest fight of all time.” Joe Rogan sounded like Gorilla Monsoon plugging the pay-per-view beforehand: “When I tell you that the air here is electric, I am not kidding. This has been the craziest week in Vegas… The weigh-in yesterday was the biggest weigh-in in Nevada combat sports history.”

Counting the preliminary card, the first six fights went the distance. And then things picked up: Chad Mendes countered a Cody McKenzie kick with a killer body shot, ending it in 31 seconds. Then Demian Maia got in a good position on Dong Hyun Kim and broke his rib with a takedown 47 seconds in. Forty-year-old Cung Le getting his first UFC win kept things rolling before the co-main event. The early-arrving crowd was into everything, too, building a great atmosphere.

The most fun extracurricular was after the Griffin-Ortiz fight: Griffin attempted to run to the back immediately after his fight ended, and Dana White chased after him until he was able to drag him back to the ring. There was something for everyone!

5. Sometimes, watching UFC can hurt. The pre-PPV card was an all-decision affair. Fans even chanted “boring.” But there was a little action: John Alessio got kicked below the belt.

Alessio took the worst of quite a few low blows on the night. There was a short delay while he recovered, but Alessio still went the distance, losing by unanimous decision to Shane Roller. That kick had to feel worse, though.

– Dan McQuade

Chael Sonnen dominated Anderson Silva in their last fight, but in the end lost by submission. (Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE)

SI.com analysts Ben Fowlkes, Jeff Wagenheim and Jon Wertheim provide their predictions for UFC 148 main event between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen on Saturday in Las Vegas. Share your prediction in the comments below.

BEN FOWLKES

Like any rematch between two men have already spent nearly a half-hour sweating and bleeding on each other, this fight is all about adjustments. If Sonnen can take Silva down as easily as he did in the first fight, he’s got this. If Silva has gone back to the lab and figured out a solution for that particular problem, it will be a nightmare for Sonnen. Since we saw so very little in the first fight to suggest that Silva can stay upright, I have to think Sonnen will be able to plant him on his back again in the rematch. This time, I expect he’ll make the most of it. Sonnen by decision.

JEFF WAGENHEIM

Family vacation at the lake this week, and all I do is sit in the sun and vacillate, my mind off in the Nevada desert. My son invites me for a swim, and I announce, “Silva is the greatest of all time!” My daughter asks for ice cream, and I declare, “Sonnen has the winning formula!” On and on goes the dithering, until my wife finally zeroes in on the essence: “How can someone pick against Anderson Silva, his 15 straight wins and nine title defenses?” My answer: You go by what you see … or have seen. Sonnen by takedowns, ground-and-pound and — taking a leap of faith that Chael has developed a little submission defense — on points. Sonnen by decision.

JON WERTHEIM

Sometimes playing the heel is just so much marketing, a way to goose pay-per-view buys, draw attention and set up the good-versus-evil dynamic that predates sport promotion by thousands of years. Sometimes playing the heel is a shrewd bit of mental warfare, that, prepositionally speaking, gets you under an opponent’s skin and inside his head, making emotional rather than rational come fight night. And sometimes playing the heel can backfire, not only imbuing your counterpart with motivation but distracting the “bad guy” himself who’s so busy with method acting he neglects his training. Says here Anderson Silva avenges his last (narrow) victory against Chael Sonnen and wins soundly in the rematch. He’s simply better on too many dimensions. The storyline will have a superhero ring to it, good trumping bad; afterwards the defeated villain may even admit the error in his ways. (“Anderson won my respect tonight,” you almost hear Sonnen already admitting to Joe Rogen.) All will be right with the world. We’ve seen this movie before. But we will also wonder what the fight would have looked like had Sonnen simply kept his mouth shut and gone about his job … Silva by decision.

Anderson Silva earned a fifth-round submission of Chael Sonnen during their first meeting back in August 2010. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

Chael Sonnen had to have been smiling on his end of the phone line.

Isn’t the whole point of trash talking to get your opponent off his game? Yet for the nearly two years since he came closer than anyone in the UFC to beating Anderson Silva, as he threw every insult from “absolute fraud” to “dirtbag” at the middleweight champion, he saw not the slightest crack in the armor. Even after a rematch was announced and Chael ramped up his antagonism, “The Spider” remained hazily soft-spoken, his affect teetering between blasé and bored. That had to be killing Sonnen.

Until Monday afternoon, that is, when a whole different Silva showed up on a conference call with members of the media who’ll be covering UFC 148 a week from Saturday in Las Vegas.

“First of all, Chael is a criminal,” Silva said in response to the first mention of his opponent, speaking in Portuguese that then was translated by his manager, Ed Soares. “He’s been convicted of crimes. He doesn’t deserve to be inside of the octagon. When the time comes and the time is right, I’m going to break his face and break every one of the teeth in his mouth.”

Well, well.

And there was more. Each time Sonnen’s name was mentioned, Silva became more graphic in his pitiless forecast. He promised “to beat his ass like he’s never been beaten before” …
beat him “the way his parents should have beat him to teach him some manners” … “beat him out of the UFC.” It was as if Silva was aping Sonnen’s mean-spirited standup routine, the longest-running comedy act in MMA. So Anderson, how bad is the beating going to be? “He’s going to have to go see a plastic surgeon after the fight.” Ba-da-boom.

As Silva went on, the words sounding so uncharacteristic, I found myself wondering whether he was really just talking about how the weather is lovely these days in Rio, and Soares was translating it as a Sonnen-is-a-dead-man threat in order to boost pay-per-view sales. But several Brazilian journalists took to Twitter to assure us monolinguals that the manager actually had softened what Silva was saying.

Reaction to Silva’s pitbull act puzzled me. The pervasive theme on Twitter and even in some media accounts was this: Boy, are you in for it now, Chael. I don’t get it. Anderson Silva became the deadly fighter he is by being patient, elusive and impassive until it’s time to strike. That is, by being himself. Maybe he’s capable of morphing into a José Aldo-style aggressor and being even more of a killer. If so, Sonnen is in trouble. But it’s reasonable to think that Anderson fighting angry is not Anderson at his best.

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Anderson Silva (left) and Chael Sonnen (right) will finally wage their anticipated rematch at UFC 148 in Las Vegas on July 7. (Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC)

Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen are still scheduled to meet this summer, and that’s good news for fight fans.

But some bad news surrounding the rematch came Tuesday morning when the Brazilian UFC middleweight champion, his self-proclaimed beltholder of an opponent and Dana White, the fight organization’s president, showed up in Rio de Janeiro to announce that the bout no longer would be held in a stadium there on June 23, as scheduled, but was being moved to July 7 in Las Vegas.

The fight hasn’t exactly lost its luster — Vegas has more of that than anywhere else on the planet — but it’s lost a good bit of the grit and righteousness that have made this rematch’s backstory so intriguing.

You see, the fight is not simply between Silva and Sonnen. Chael, with his WWE-style bluster, has turned it into him vs. Brazil with his trash-talk ridicule of the country’s top fighters and even the nation itself. The mockery of the Nogueira brothers, Vitor Belfort, Wanderlei Silva and the like is fair game; they’re all big boys who can take care of themselves. But Sonnen’s rhetoric about Brazil has veered into ugly-American xenophobia.

“When I was a little kid, I remember going outside and sitting with my friends,” Sonnen said during the press conference. “We’d talk about the latest technology and medicine and gaming and American ingenuity.” Then he brought his story to the present day to draw a contrast, saying, “And I’d look outside and Anderson and the Brazilian kids are sitting outside playing the mud.”

That’s Chael at his mildest. In past diatribes, he’s characterized Brazil as backward in far more insulting ways. And he’s done so with little or no backlash, as the MMA media — and I must lump myself in the horde, unfortunately — mostly just yuks it up with the guy.

So Brazil deserved its shot at Sonnen. Sure, he appeared Tuesday in a Rio conference room, and I half-expected to see a shoe thrown at his head, a la George W. Bush before the Baghdad media. But a press conference isn’t enough. After talking the talk, he should have been made to walk the walk — that is, stroll out to the octagon in a soccer stadium filled with Brazilians excited to see him get beat up by the champ.

It’s just not going to work out in Brazil, however. My first thought upon hearing of the fight’s relocation was that the UFC feared for Sonnen’s safety. That might actually be the reason, but the public explanation is that the Rio stadium event fell apart because of the United Nations’ Rio+20 Conference taking place the same week, eating up hotel rooms and making a UFC event a logistical impossibilty. So there go the plans of sustainability for conference attendees who were hoping to catch the fights, too.

There still will be a UFC 147 fight card in Brazil — there’s no date set, but it’ll be in an arena, not in a stadium, and still feature a showdown of The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil coaches Belfort and Wanderlei Silva, plus the reality show’s middleweight and featherweight finals and a Fabricio Werdum-Mike Russow heavyweight bout. White said Tuesday he might also put featherweight champion José Aldo on the card. So it’s not all bad news for Brazilian fans.

And by moving Silva-Sonnen II to Las Vegas, White has transformed UFC 148 into a Fourth of July fireworks spectacle. In addition to the fight for the middleweight championship, there also will be a bantamweight tile bout between The Ultimate Fighter: Live coaches Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber plus a Tito Ortiz vs. Forrest Griffin rubber match (perhaps Tito’s final fight), Rich Franklin vs. Cung Le and Michael Bisping vs. Tim Boetsch.

All’s well that ends well, then? That’s what White would have you believe. “This is going to be a global event. If we were going to do it here in Brazil, it needed to be done in a huge soccer stadium,” he said. “As we got into the logistics of trying to make this thing happen here, we just couldn’t pull it off. If we couldn’t do it here, then Las Vegas was the only other option.”

Silva took some convincing to make the move, according to While, although the champion was nothing but agreeable at the press conference. “I’m a UFC athlete, and I have fans all over the world,” he said. “Regardless of where this fight takes place, I will represent Brazil, and I will do my job and defend my belt.”

That was the professional thing for him to say. But the fans in his home country deserved better.

– Jeff Wagenheim

Chael Sonnen hugs a fan after inviting her on the Fox Theater stage on Friday. (Matt Dollinger/SI)

ATLANTA — Chael Sonnen has never been one to shy away from contact or controversy.

Regarded as one of the top middleweight fighters in the UFC, Sonnen is better known as the pound-for-pound trash-talking champion in a sport riddled with challengers. Not only is Sonnen one of the UFC’s biggest personalities, but he’s also one of its most quotable – challenging topics much like he does opponents.

Promoting his new book, “The Voice of Reason: A VIP Pass to Enlightenment,” Sonnen graced the Fox Theater stage in Atlanta on Friday for a question-and-answer sessions with fans prior to the official UFC 145 weigh-ins.

Sonnen’s next scheduled fight is a rematch against Anderson Silva at UFC 147 in Brazil, but reports are circulating that Sonnen-Silva II will be moved to UFC 148 in Las Vegas due to a logistical conflict with a United Nations conference in Rio slated for the same time of the original event.

That might be a blessing for Sonnen, who saved his harshest words for Brazil and its many fighters, including Silva, on Friday. Rather than rehash everything that came out of Sonnen’s mouth (some of which this blog probably shouldn’t repeat), here are the top 10 PG-13 quotes from Sonnen’s memorable appearance in Atlanta:

10) “The tooth brush was actually created in Brazil. If it’d been created anywhere inAmericaor somewhere else it’d be called the teeth brush.”

9) “I’m not a martial artist, I’m an award-winning author. I don’t even know what the word ‘martial’ means. I’m not 100 percent I could spell it and I don’t think I could define it.”

8) “I’ll never be a closet champion. Come one, come all.”

7) “I haven’t even agreed to (fight Silva). My demand has not been met. Anderson has his list, I have but one request. There will be 80,000 people in attendance and my demand is simple: silence. When I come through the curtain, they will sit down and shut their mouths and show respect to their American guest. Or I will go back in my car, back to the airport, back toAmericaand (they) won’t even see me fight.”

6) “I don’t think you can give yourself a ring name. When I was young they used to call me ‘foreman,’ not because I was in charge, but because I did the work of four men.”

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