• UFC 117

Silva's 'ducked me for four years' claims Sonnen

Chael Sonnen will force Anderson Silva to fight © UFC

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Chael Sonnen accused Anderson Silva of "ducking" him "for years" after the UFC made their middleweight championship bout official for UFC 117 on August 7 in Oakland, California.

Sonnen and Silva have known for a while that their paths would cross at UFC 117, and the challenger has been determined to take every opportunity to trash talk Silva, who has gone undefeated for the past four years.

As reigning 185lb champion, Silva holds the record for consecutive UFC victories (11), yet he earned the wrath of fans and UFC officials alike in his last outing against Demian Maia. Toying with his compatriot, the Brazilian mocked Maia for three rounds - punishing him for some disrespectful pre-fight comments, but Sonnen is adamant he will not stand for such treatment.

As a Greco-Roman wrestler with good hands and victories over Yushin Okami, Nate Marquardt and Paulo Filho, Sonnen insists he has been hunting Silva down for years. Boasting a relentless pace that rendered Marquart helpless in his last fight, Sonnen is seen as the man to make the champion fight for 25 minutes at the Oracle Arena.

"He's been ducking me for four years," Sonnen said. "This fight is a large part about the title and a large part about him. We're not going to be friends. He's not my kind of guy.

"But this fight is also to prove a point to the rest of the guys in the division. One guy has challenged him in four years and it's been me."

Silva never rose to Maia's baiting ahead of his last fight, preferring to hurt him inside the Octagon, and he is again staying quiet in the face of sheer abuse from his latest challenger. Sonnen's last defeat came against Maia, and Silva is simply warning the American that he is setting himself up for an almighty fall.

"Chael is a very good fighter," Silva said. "I am training very hard with my team, and Minotauro Nogueira and Lyoto Machida, and I will be ready. This is a title fight and I expect him to be ready because I know I will be. If the guy wants to talk that's fine. It's a lot different inside the Octagon."

Also officially confirmed for UFC 117 is a welterweight collision between newly-inducted Hall-of-Famer Matt Hughes and 170lb new boy Ricardo Almeida. Former two-time champion Hughes has done it all in the sport, including winning more fights than any other in the UFC, but he finds himself in his twilight years despite back-to-back wins over Matt Serra and Renzo Gracie. Almeida is a Jiu-Jitsu black belt who looked powerful in his 170lb debut against Matt Brown, and a victory over Hughes would confirm him as a true contender in his new division.

And UFC 117 promises to deliver a buffet of top level wrestling after Clay Guida and Rafael Dos Anjos were confirmed in the lightweight division. Guida is fighting his way back to the top after bouncing back from defeats to Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez with a submission win over Shannon Gugerty, while Dos Anjos is proving to be one of the most dangerous submissions artists around after three straight wins including a stoppage of Terry Etim in his most recent outing.

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