Chael Sonnen makes his opinion known on Kai Asakura challenging for UFC title in his debut: "Nobody's complaining"
Chael Sonnen recently weighed in and shared his thoughts on Kai Asakura challenging Alexandre Pantoja for the flyweight championship in his promotional debut at UFC 310. The Japanese star is moving down from 135 pounds, however, there hasn't been any pushback or complaints about him receiving the title shot.
Asakura was one of the most popular fighters in Rizin, where he was the bantamweight champion before relinquishing the title to join the UFC. He has a massive following on YouTube as well as an impressive social media presence despite not competing for the MMA leader.
Once his debut was made official for UFC 310, the response was surprisingly positive as the current top-ranked 125-pounders didn't appear to protest the decision.
In a video that was recently uploaded to his YouTube channel, 'The American Gangster' brought up that there are former champions competing on the card, but the Japanese star is the headliner.
Sonnen heaped praise on Asakura's toughness and mentioned that nobody complaining about his placement is telling of how highly regarded he is among the MMA community:
"You get the boys together in a room for an hour, they all know who's who and nobody's complaining. That the unranked guy who happens to be debuting in the fight capital of the world on pay-per-view in the main event for the [flyweight] belt, nobody's complaining about that. Asakura's a very tough guy, he's a dangerous guy." [7:10]
Check out the full video featuring Chael Sonnen's comments about Kai Asakura below:
Chael Sonnen uses Kai Asakura as example to blast UFC ranking committee
In addition to making his opinion known regarding Alexandre Pantoja vs. Kai Asakura, Chael Sonnen also used the Japanese star as an example to blast the UFC rankings committee.
During the aforementioned video, Sonnen mentioned that Asakura being unranked and receiving a title shot is further proof that exciting fights can be made despite where fighters are ranked by the subpar committee:
"You're telling me we can't get Bo Nickal and [Khamzat] Chimaev together? We can't do it because they're too far in the rankings. [Kai] Asakura isn't in the rankings...We look at the rankings committee and we laugh, we don't take these guys seriously. The reason I don't do interviews and bring guys from the rankings committee on here is you don't respect them...they don't know what they're doing." [6:20]
Check out the official promo for Alexandre Pantoja vs. Kai Asakura below: