Chael Sonnen thinks Fedor Emelianenko has padded record.

The next round of Bellator’s Heavyweight Grand Prix will feature former UFC Middlweight title challenger Chael Sonnen facing arguable Heavyweight GOAT Fedor Emelianenko

This Saturday at Bellator 198 Fedor secured his passage to this next round with a knockout over former Heavyweight champion Frank Mir. Chael entered the cage for some awkward trash talk following the fight, and now has taken to the airways, criticizing Fedor’s storied career on his podcast. Specifically Chael sought to invalidate all of Fedor’s fights in the Pride promotion:

“I don’t accept your wins in Japan. The referee was wearing an earpiece, you never had a weigh-in, you never had a commission. Anyone that came over from Japan to America has a losing record. Why? I’ll tell you because the fights over here are real and they are fixed in Japan. You got a whole lot of rub and a whole lot of money out of doing fake fights, that pisses me off as a fan who bought those fights and that later found out I was buying wrasslin.”

This is a line of attack Chael has used before, most notably against Pride legend Wanderlei Silva. Perhaps there is some truth to the claim that fights in Japan were corrupt. Chael also insinuated that perhaps the Pride stars didnt even KNOW they were in fixed fights, and that created a high level of delusion.

“The guy that is going to go over in professional wrestling will sit down in the same room as the guy that’s going to put him over and then work out the match. What they did in Japan was they only told one guy. So the guys that were going to win, your Cro Cop’s, your Wanderlei’s, your Fedor’s, they were never in the room when the guy that was your promoter, also known as the Yakuza, also known as the Japanese mafia, walks in the room and tells the opponent when to go down.“

In the end though, Chael styled his criticism hilariously in the form of a complaint, admitting that while Fedor does have real skills, they are difficult to evaluate when the majority of his career occurred in a fixed ring:

“I’m not pissing on his skills at all. I’m just telling you that when I think about him it’s very hard to go out and study him because his fights were fake in Japan. His opponent was told when to go down.”

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