Well, it turns out that Chael Sonnen won’t be stepping in to fight Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 161 in place of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. That doesn’t mean Sonnen isn’t fighting Shogun though. Today on UFC Tonight it was announced that a light heavyweight bout between Sonnen and Shogun will be the main event of the first UFC on Fox Sports 1 card, which takes place on August 17 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Once again, by offering to step up and fight on short notice, Chael Sonnen has parlayed doing that into a high profile main event fight. Last time he even managed to get a whole Ultimate Fighter coaching gig alongside his UFC 159 opponent Jon Jones out of it.
Also once again, Shogun has been left without an opponent for an event and then subsequently pulled off a card, which happened at UFC 149 last year. Shogun went on to fight Brandon Vera in the main event of UFC on Fox 4, where he won by fourth round TKO.
Sonnen comes off two losses in a row, albeit to two UFC champs in Anderson Silva and Jon Jones. In his last six fights, he’s 3-3. Shogun, is also 3-3 in his last six fights and is coming off a loss to Alexander Gustafsson at UFC on Fox 5 in December.
