Top 5 UFC predictions that made everyone fear the 'Chael curse'
A veteran of the fight game, Chael Sonnen has fought in the UFC, WEC and Bellator MMA. In a career spanning 22 years, Sonnen has fought some of the best fighters the sport has to offer.
'The Bad Guy' has shared the octagon with Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, Fedor Emelianenko, Tito Ortiz and many more legends of the sport. He fought Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight belt and Jon Jones for the UFC light heavyweight title but came up short both times.
Sonnen has also worked as an MMA analyst for ESPN since 2014. The first video on Chael Sonnen's YouTube channel went live in February 2018. In just three years, his YouTube subscriber count has grown to almost 900,000. A big reason has been his UFC fight predictions and their inaccuracy.
He has gotten them wrong so many times that fans refer to his predictions as curses. According to Sonnen, fans have now started to beg him, ''not to pick their favorite fighter."
On that note, here's a list of the top five incorrect predictions that made fans fear the Chael curse.
#5. UFC 236: Max Holloway vs. Dustin Poirier 2
We're starting off the list with one of Chael Sonnen's earlier predictions. Sonnen had already predicted the outcomes of many fights, but this contest was significant. Max Holloway and Dustin Poirier were both at a crossroads. The two had met earlier in 2012; it was Holloway's UFC debut. 'The Diamond' submitted Holloway in the first round and won the fight.
In 2019, seven years after their first match, the interim lightweight title was on the line. The victor would fight Khabib Nurmagomedov in a unification bout. The stakes were high for both men.
Sonnen posted a video on his YouTube channel a day before the fight. He picked Holloway to win the bout. Sonnen argued that Max Holloway's output would be more than Poirier's. According to him, Dustin Poirier had more power, but 'Blessed' would be faster and more accurate.
The bout was an all-out war. Both Holloway and Poirier gave one of the best performances of their careers. 'The Diamond' pressed the action early, but Holloway rallied and made the fight more even. The final rounds were full of intense back-and-forth action. After five rounds of relentless fighting, Poirier won via unanimous decision, capturing the interim UFC lightweight belt.
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