Coach: Wand/Sonnen TUF Brawl Was ‘Orchestrated’

By Evan Stoumbelis

The story of the brawl between Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva on TUF Brazil continued to evolve today when one of Sonnen’s coaches, Jamie Huey, spoke to Niall McGrath of TalkingBrawl and said the whole thing was ‘orchestrated’ by the production team.

“I’ll kind of break something here, that’s not really a story being told,” Huey said to TalkingBrawl’s Niall McGrath. “Everybody wants to know if that was a set up. Not in regards to Chael or Wanderlei. Kind of something that was being said and done. Which I thought was… production had told Wanderlei, and you can see it after the brawl, Wanderlei goes up to our team and Warlley Alves specifically and says, ‘you guys need to watch out for this guy. He’s talking shit about your own team.’

Now production had been telling Wanderlei that Chael had been saying things about our team negatively when they weren’t around. Wanderlei got uh, he was a little, you know, offended by that. It wasn’t true but it was basically something that was said (by) production to Wanderlei to kind of strike up a reaction. I don’t think they thought it was going to go the extreme that it did. And were all being held back on the other side of the door, not knowing what’s going on.

We’re getting ready to go to the weigh ins, and the next thing Warlley, Pazzone, and a few other guys bust through the door. I think Dida might have been the first guy to go through the door. And that’s when the fight took place. I think it was something that was set up to get a reaction, but inadvertently, nobody knew it was going to go to the extent that it did. I am glad nobody got hurt seriously though.

Huey went on to answer the question we were all itching to know the answer to: Did the production team set it up?

“Oh, I know it was,” said Huey. “I went out to dinner with a couple of guys and they admitted that it was something that was orchestrated.

I don’t think production knew it was going to get as far out of hand as it did… Wanderlei throws kind of a wide right hand. Chael takes him down, and gets a hold of him, and now Chael’s getting sucker punched in the back of the head.

Now you’ve got 20 guys on the other side of the door that find out there’s a fight, and everybody comes running. Teams are picked; guys are on sides. Now had we had a bunch of knuckleheads, that could have got ugly fast… we’re on concrete and we’re four feet away from a barbell set with weights and barbells, and we’re in Brazil.

It’s a rough place down there. Some guys fight for their lives down there, for survival. So it really could have got ugly, it could have got bad, somebody really seriously could have got hurt.

We’re professional, we know where the line is. 20 guys coming out in the middle of a fight, things could have got bad.

The statements made by Huey are contrary to those made by UFC President Dana White, however, who had the following to say about the brawl in an interview last week:

“There’s a bunch of idiots in the media saying, ‘That thing looks contrived,’” White said. “It was far from contrived. That thing was a disgusting display of what shouldn’t happen, and if I was there it would have never happened.

The fact that there were other people, even people holding camera in that f–king place and let that happen is just beyond belief. Then the kid who runs in and sucker-punched Chael from behind, it’s just as bad as it can get.