Sonnen is a one-man marketing machine ahead of UFC 117

Chael Sonnen is a realtor, politician and mixed martial arts fighter. But mostly he's in the business of Chael Sonnen.

And Sonnen has been beating the drum for his own personal brand ahead of his UFC 117 title showdown with middleweight champion Anderson Silva on Aug 7 in Oakland, Calif.

The 33-year-old from Portland has laid into Silva at will, calling him selfish and unprofessional while accusing the Brazilian of ducking him.

"I'm going to throw him on his back and beat a hole in his face," he told a fan question-and-answer session in June in Vancouver before UFC 115.

Sonnen has also taken swipes at Silva's manager-interpreter Ed Soares and his training partners — the Nogueira brothers.

In short, he has been a one-man marketing machine in drumming up an audience for a date with a champion whose antics have tired the patience of many mixed martial arts fans.

Sonnen, as smart as he is tough, knows exactly what he is doing.

He can sell a fight as well as a piece of property, or a political position. And while he says his marketing skills have improved over the years, he knows it's an ever-changing area.

"There's no answer in marketing," he said. "What's true today isn't always true tomorrow. What worked in the 1980s doesn't work today. You've got to change with the flow and you've got to pay attention and you've got to know where the indicators are if you want to be ahead of it.

"I've found what those indicators are and I'm not going to pass them to anyone else. I'm in the Chael Sonnen business."

Silva could use an MMA makeover. A talented fighter with oodles of skills, he has become an enigma to many fans.

Along with Canadian Georges St-Pierre, the 35-year-old Brazilian is widely considered the best pound-for-pound MMAs fighter on the planet. But Silva, who has all but cleaned out the 185-pound division, has seemed disinterested in his last three middleweight title defences.

Silva (26-4 including 11-0 in the UFC) has done more dancing than punching in the cage recently. But then again he has won with ease.

Silva was so unimpressive last time out against Demian Maia at UFC 112 in April that UFC president Dana White threatened to fire him if there was a repeat performance.

Despite that, Silva is more than a 4-1 favourite to beat Sonnen, according to some bookmakers.

Sonnen says he will personally deliver the pink slip at the Oracle Arena.

"They were going to fire him, they were going to send him to Brazil and put him on the unemployment line and I begged Dana White 'Keep him around. I will get rid of him the same way I did when you called me to fire Paulo Filho.'"

Filho was the former WEC champion Sonnen beat in November 2008, avenging a controversial loss to the Brazilian 11 months earlier.

Still Silva, when presented with larger challenges like former light-heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin last August at UFC 101, has shown his teeth and taken care of business quickly and brutally.

Sonnen (26-10-1) comes into the fight on a roll. The former NCAA wrestling champion and Olympic team alternate has manhandled Nate (The Great) Marquardt and Yushin Okami in his last two fights.

He says Silva's "dancing and juking and jiving" are all about setting up his opponents for a nasty finish. Just ask Griffin.

But Sonnen isn't showing his hand.

"I really don't know too much about it, I'm not super familiar with his fights," he said flippantly of Silva. "As far as mine go, geez, I just work really really hard. There's nobody in this business that can keep up with me on a daily basis, not one guy. And hard work pays off."

Still Sonnen, a full-time realtor, ridicules other fighters' claims that their training needs preclude any other kind of work. He says he spends 2.5 to three hours a day in the gym.

"There's nobody in this business that can keep up with me on a daily basis, not one guy," he boasts. "And hard work pays off."

While Sonnen limits his hours in the gym, he says the training has taken a toll on his body ahead of the Silva fight.

"People ask me a lot. 'Are you excited?' I'm not, it's a lot of hard work. I'm really sore, I'm really tired constantly. I'm in calorie-deprivation ... the final 30 days is usually a miserable time.

"But frankly that's the way it should be. It's not easy to be champion."

In the cage, Sonnen consistently puts his body on the line. While he dominated Marquardt at UFC 109 in February, he leaked blood after taking an elbow from the bottom.

After the fight, Sonnen looked like he had been in a car crash. An ugly slash of stitches curved down his forehead and there were more stitches on the bridge of his nose and blood in his mouth from a cut on the inside of his lip.

"I have never felt so bad in my life,'' he said. "I've been rear-ended in traffic, I've had bumps and bruises from sports, from gymnastics to wrestling. I've never felt this bad ever.

"Both feet hurt, both knees hurt, both elbows hurt, both hands hurt. Let's see, my sternum's killing me, my head's bleeding, my nose got stitched. The inside of my mouth is cut. I feel horrible."

Sonnen said he didn't know how many stitches he got, "but I was in there a while."

Asked several months later about Marquardt, Sonnen said: "I would never want to fight him again."

Sonnen, who lost 36.2 pounds in 21 days before a short-notice fight with Dan Miller at UFC 98, has to put his body through hell to get down to 185 pounds.

He says making weight the day before the fight is always a moment to treasure.

"The only part that I get excited for is the weigh-in," he said. "It's kind of like losing your wallet. It's worth it just to have that feeling when you finally find it. It's the same thing with cutting weight and preparation, it's gruelling, it's horrible, it's the barrier of entry into the upper echelons of this sport."

On the political front, Sonnen was recruited by the Republicans to run for the state house of representatives in District 37. He withdrew in June, citing a legal issue arising from a real estate case.

He had already served as an elected precinct member in Oregon's District 22, a lesser position.

While he is clearly selling the pay-per-view in needling the champion, he has been consistent in his criticism of Silva.

In February, when he was slated to meet the winner of a Silva-Vitor Belfort fight that eventually never happened, he said he would prefer to meet Silva because Belfort was "a lot tougher fighter."

In early 2009, he said Silva was an excellent fighter with "some holes" and that his reputation was enhanced by marketing.

Still, Sonnen's campaign-like rhetoric for the Silva fight has produced bold statements, some of which clash.

At the fan Q and A, asked about the need to take the fight to the ground, he replied: "If Chael Sonnen cannot get it to the floor, Chael Sonnen gets his ass kicked."

Quizzed in a subsequent interview, he offered a different story about the need to get Silva off his feet.

"That's just silly. Because when I get him to the ground, it's not a walk in the park either. And no fight starts on the ground, they all standing up. . . . He's not that easy to deal with on the ground. I'm not that easy to deal with on our feet."

Asked whether he is concerned that his comments might only serve to fuel Silva, Sonnen seemed to lose interest. There is no flip response, only: "There's concern for everything, absolutely. There's plenty of concern."

"I don't care," he adds.

And while he denigrates Silva's character, he speaks with admiration about his fighting skills. Sonnen recalls reading about Silva's wins in Japan and then seeing him in the UFC.

"He was just so good, and he had so many tools. . . . None of that's really gone away, I'm not delusional to his skills in the least. He's fantastic, you know, even though people think I disagree and he's not the pound-for-pound best, why not? It's him or Georges. I don't know who else you could put up there. I'd give him the nod."

In the sometimes contrary world of Chael Sonnen, however, he says there is one even better.

"I am the best fighter God ever made, living or dead. There's never been anybody that's better than me."

Aug. 7 will tell the tale. Ever the entrepreneur, Sonnen knows the fight game can turn on a dime.

"Yeah it can go one way or the other, it's like a market," he said. "There's always what we call adjustments, but again that's just the business I'm in."