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Chael Sonnen's top ten quotes

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Chael Sonnen, arguably the greatest talker in the entire fight game, steps into the biggest challenge of his career when he bids for the UFC light-heavyweight title this weekend. Reigning champion Jon Jones is a huge favourite in the UFC 159 main event, but if one man can convince an entire nation that an upset is on the cards, it's the rhyming, mocking, taunting voice of Mr Chael P Sonnen.

Below we take a look at ten of Sonnen's most memorable quotes from the past few years in the UFC…

"Listen Wanderlei, I will do a home invasion on you. I will cut the power to your house and the next thing you'll hear is me climbing up your stairs in a pair of night vision goggles I bought in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. I'll pick the lock to the master room door, take a picture of you in bed with the Nogueira brothers working on your 'jiu-jitsu'. I'll take said quote unquote photograph, post it at dorksfrombrazil.com, password - not required, username - not required. That, Wanderlei, is how you threaten someone. Dummy."

Sonnen has never cared much for Brazilians - at least not publically - and his taunting of three of the country's legends (Wanderlei Silva and the Nogueira brothers) later prompted a 'fan' to attack him at a media event.

"I was in Las Vegas when the Nogueira brothers first touched down in America. There was a bus, this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Little Nog tried to feed it a carrot, while Big Nog was petting it. He thought it was a horse. This really happened. He tried to feed a bus a carrot, and now you're telling me this country has computers? I didn't know that."

Incredible really that only one Brazilian attacked him after another attack on the Nogueira brothers.

"Take Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong did a number of things and he gave himself cancer. He cheated, he did drugs, and he gave himself cancer. Well, instead of saying 'Hey listen, I cheated and gave myself cancer, don't be like me,' he actually made himself the victim and then went out and profited something like $15 million from this 'Hey, poor me, let's find a cure for cancer' campaign instead of just coming clean and saying, 'Look, here's what I did, I screwed myself up, and I hope people learn from my mistakes.' You just watch these guys and can't help but think, God, what a fraud. You got the whole Michael Phelps being a pothead thing too. I'm just glad I'm in the business I'm in so I can get them in the cage and kick the crap out of them."

Worth noting that this Sonnen quote was made way before the Lance Armstrong scandal came to light. He was widely criticised at the time for questioning a national hero.

"You know, these guys want to talk about God; 'Oh, I want to thank God. I want to thank God.' Listen, I'm a God-fearing man, go to church every Sunday and have since I was a boy. But if I ever found out that God cared one way or another about a borderline illegal fist-fight on Saturday night, I would be so greatly disappointed that it would make rethink my entire belief system."

Clearly Sonnen doesn't believe the man upstairs has an accumulator going during a UFC event.

"Anderson Silva is as fake as Mike Tyson was. They called him the hardest, 'The baddest man in the world' but he wasn't even the toughest guy in America and we had to sit through and listen to that over and over again as he fought lots of tomato cans."

Chael Sonnen brought a fake belt to his rematch with Anderson Silva © Getty Images

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As ridiculous as it seems, Sonnen may just have a point on this one. Take a look, you can count the big-name Tyson victims on one hand. Frank Bruno? Trevor Berbick? Michael Spinks? After that, you're struggling…

"You're looking at the reflection of perfection. You're looking at the man who gets all your attention. You're looking at the man with the biggest arm. At the man, with the greatest charm, the man in Chicago who will do harm to the guy three doors down. Whatcha gonna do, when you know who? How ya gonna deal, with the man of steel? How ya gonna react to Sonnen's attack?"

This was Sonnen's prelude to his showdown with Michael Bisping, a fight he eventually won via a hotly-disputed decision, which saw Sonnen even concede that Bisping won the fight.

Nevertheless, eat your heart out Muhammad Ali.

"Well, for those of you who can't see, this is the championship belt that I took from Anderson Silva. In this country, possession is 9/10 of the law. Finders keepers, losers weepers. If he wants it back, he knows where he can find it."

Having beaten Silva up for 23 minutes of their first fight, only to lose in the dying stages, Sonnen felt it was only right that he wore the championship belt to the press conference for their rematch. Unfortunately for him, Silva walked out of the Octagon with it - again - come fight night.

"Even if I thought I could get a submission I'm not laying underneath a grown man with my legs spread on worldwide TV. Some guys subscribe to that theory but I am a Republican and we don't do that."

Sonnen's explains why Silva's first win - which came via triangle choke - didn't count.

"My phone rings, they call me up and say, 'Chael, your testosterone level is too high.' I say, 'Well, how high was it?' They say, '0.7.' I said, 'What's normal?' They say, '0.6.'; I said, 'One-tenth? You're telling me I'm one-tenth higher than the average man? Re-test that - you must have caught me on a low day.'"

Sonnen earned a six-month suspension upon appeal after showing elevated testosterone levels following his first fight with Anderson Silva. Not that he viewed that as the major issue.

"We only had one [ring girl] and that was Chandella. The other was the IQ card girl. Arianny kind of walks around and holds up her latest test score. One time when there was a title fight, she got all the way up to five and we were very proud of her."

Not even the Octagon girls escape Sonnen's lethal tongue.

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