VIDEO | Ahead of Cormier vs. Oezdemir, Chael Sonnen wonders about “the elephant in the room”

On January 20, in the co-main event of UFC 220, UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier will put his strap on the line opposite surging Swiss knockout artist Volkan Oezdemir. Ahead of this fight, pretty much everyone has an opinion on it. One of the more interesting opinions on the fight comes from Chael Sonnen, who is wondering just how much of a role Cormier’s longtime training partner Luke Rockhold is playing Volkan Oezdemir’s training camp. Rockhold and Oezdemir, of course, both train at Combat Club in Lantana, Florida, and have even apparently done a few rounds of sparring together.

“Why is nobody talking about the elephant in the room on this one?” Sonnen queried in a recent episode of Beyond the Fight. “There is some insider baseball here. Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier’s longest standing teammate, is now a new teammate of Volkan. They’re training together, every day. I saw a sparring video myself on the internet. What’s Rockhold saying? He’s not just saying ‘oh I’ll stay out of this one.’ You can’t just stay out of this one. Your buddy calls you and says ‘what are you going to do? Are you this guy’s teammate, or aren’t you? Do you belong to this gym or do you belong to that one?’ So what’s the insider baseball there. What’s the insider guy saying. What’s the guy that’s done a hundred rounds with DC saying to the guy he’s done thirty rounds with in Volkan. I find that interesting. I find both of these guys to be very confident, and makes me wonder who’s giving them that confidence?”

What do you think of these comments from Chael Sonnen?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 1/9/2018.