Chael Sonnen dropped a hell of a bombshell on the latest episode of his podcast You’re Welcome.
The former UFC middleweight and light-heavyweight contender revealed on the show that Jose Aldo’s attorney contacted him over the weekend threatening to sue him for defamation. Sonnen explained he was out having lunch with his family when he received the call.
“I get a phonecall. So I answer it on the car speaker. It’s a lawyer from Brazil threatening to sue me for defamation. Her client? Jose Aldo.”
“I had just done a show, Michael Landsburg out in Canada. Landsburg asked me about Aldo-McGregor and do I think it will happen and blah-blah-blah, and I answered the question.”
Aldo pulled out of the fight with Conor McGregor two weeks before UFC 189 citing a fractured rib he suffered in training as the reason for his decision. The UFC subsequently issued a press release stating the champion had bruised his rib and that he was cleared to fight. An x-ray linked to Jose Aldo emerged online which appeared to show a broken rib.
However, the day before UFC 189, Dana White claimed that Aldo’s broken rib MRI showed an old injury. White added that new injury was the bruised rib and damaged cartilage and that it wasn’t just UFC doctors that diagnosed the Aldo bruised rib, “it was three different doctors.”
When Landsburg asked whether he thought Aldo would ever fight McGregor, Sonnen referred to “the other set of x-rays” which Aldo’s attorney claims do not exist.
“Somewhere in my answer I said that Aldo pulling out was very fugazzi because he had two separate sets of x-rays. He had the x-rays which had been sent from his doctors to the UFC’s doctors which showed a bruised rib and he was cleared to fight. And he had a separate set of x-rays he personally released online which very clearly showed a broken rib.”
“They’re (the lawyer) saying this is inflammatory, that he did not have two sets of x-rays, that the x-ray he put online is the same as the x-ray that had been sent to the UFC and where this story of a bruised rib vs a broken rib came out, he doesn’t know, it’s not true and I’m perpetuating it.”
Sonnen added that at this point, the attorney explained that a lawsuit may happen if he continued to talk about the apparently non-existent “other set of x-rays”. He also claimed Aldo’s team had also threatened to sue the promotion for their comments on the Aldo injury.
“They said, ‘we won’t sue you if you stop talking about it.’ I said, ‘Hold on, I’ll go a step further than that, if I said it and it’s not true, I’ll give them an apology.’ I don’t want to go around saying the guy put out two x-rays if that’s not true, but I’m a little confused here. I parroted this information, I heard it and I repeated it, so where did this story come from? I heard this at a UFC press conference.”
“The attorney said, ‘yeah, well pay attention in the next few days, Â you won’t hear the UFC saying it anymore because before we called and threatened you with a lawsuit, we called and threatened them with a lawsuit.”
“I have to assume he’s telling the truth. Jose Aldo is threatening to sue me and claims that he threatened to sue the UFC. That’s a pretty big bluff. That’s a big enough bluff that I think he’s telling the truth.”
You can check out the episode 41 of You’re Welcome featuring Sonnen’s anecdote about Aldo’s attorney here.
