Chael Sonnen responds to Conor McGregor’s “Pie-Hole” tweet, doubles down on rehab claims

Chael Sonnen has responded to Conor McGregor’s fiery tweet in which he verbally attacks the former UFC title challenger over claims of substance abuse.

McGregor withdrew from his targeted UFC return against Michael Chandler on June 29 due to a toe injury. He and Chandler were supposed to clash at UFC 303 after months of waiting for the fight to come to fruition.

McGregor vs. Chandler is expected to be rescheduled for later this year by the UFC matchmakers.

Sonnen, after the news broke of McGregor’s scratched UFC comeback, claimed that the real reason behind McGregor’s withdrawal was due to a rehabilitation stint. As of this writing, there’s no direct evidence that’s the case.

McGregor didn’t take long to respond to Sonnen’s comments. You can check out McGregor’s since-deleted tweet below.

Screenshot @TheNotoriousMMA

Chael Sonnen downplays “B****” Conor McGregor’s toe injury

In a recent episode of his Beyond the Fight podcast, Sonnen doubled down that McGregor is covering up a rehabilitation stint.

“Conor McGregor sent a tweet out, and he told me to shut my pie-hole,” Sonnen began. “Now, what do you do with that? What do you do with that if you’re in my spot? Do you fire back at McGregor? Because one thing I would never do is kick a man when he’s down. I’d always man a hand up if he was down. Once he got back up and everything’s level, the rule’s off…I don’t know that [tapping to strikes] is accurate or not…the [toe injury] evidence he provides is a discolorization on the bottom part of a toe, believed to be his own. And I gotta word it that way: there’s a lot of BS pictures that go around out there…It’s a way of him resisting my belief that he’s in rehab, of which by the way, I think is a really great thing!

“I believe where he is and what he’s doing with his time is rehabilitating himself, which is awesome. He wants it to be known that he is not rehabilitating himself, he instead is repairing himself. Out of all the parts of his body that could be hurt, it’s specifically a pinkie toe? He just didn’t put out any evidence that it was his pinkie toe, and that is a surprise to me. So Conor refused my compliment, that he had the strength to seek help. You can listen to Conor’s account which makes him look a little b****.”

McGregor hasn’t fought inside the Octagon since a doctor’s stoppage loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264. As for Sonnen, he retired from MMA in 2019 and will enter the UFC Hall of Fame later this month.