• UFC 117

Silva mocks Sonnen's 'idiotic' trash talk

Anderson Silva believes he is a league above Chael Sonnen © UFC

Enlarge

Related Links

• News: Penn and Couture put legacies on the line
  
• News: UFC 117: Time for Silva to shut Sonnen's mouth
  
• News: Silva's gonna hurt me really bad - Sonnen
  
• Profile: Anderson Silva

Anderson Silva has mocked Chael Sonnen's attempts to talk his way to stardom, insisting the middleweight contender is 'idiotic' and nothing more than a 'good politician'.

UFC middleweight champion Silva has remained relatively quiet leading up to their August 7 showdown, despite some quite personal abuse from Sonnen. The Greco-Roman wrestler likened Silva's Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt to a 'toy in your happy meal', and he labelled the champion's good friends and training partners, Rogerio and Rodrigo Nogueira, 'a punching bag' and 'irrelevant' respectively.

Sonnen beat Dan Miller, Yushin Okami and Nate Marquardt to earn his title shot, but it has been his trash-talking that has garnered all the attention in the build-up to UFC 117, with the American readily admitting that he is determined to become the first fighter to show no respect to the champion. Silva has won all 11 of his UFC bouts to date, and he insists Sonnen is just setting himself up for a major fall in Oakland.

"Chael, as a fighter, is a good politician," said Silva. "As far as all the trash talk that he is talking, when both of us are inside the Octagon, he's going to have an opportunity to make good on all the things he's saying.

"There are idiotic things coming out of his mouth. Chael's saying I've never fought a wrestler. In my opinion Dan Henderson is one of the best wrestlers in MMA. With him being a politician, he should really pay attention to what he's saying.

"First Chael says he wants to be a fighter, then he says he wants to be a politician. Which one is it? You can only choose one. I've chosen to be a fighter. After the fight Chael will have a different idea of what choice he wants to make, but for now we'll have to prepare ourselves for the Octagon.

"If there's one thing I can tell my fans and everyone that's watching, it's that I'm going to go in there and give the best performance I can."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.