Former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen has joined certain corners of the MMA community in accusing Henry Cejudo of looking for a way out of his headliner this past weekend.
Cejudo continued to struggle in his comeback from retirement on Feb. 22, falling to a third straight loss in the main event of the UFC Fight Night inside Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena.
His bout with Song Yadong ended prematurely after “Triple C” was deemed unable to continue following a deep eye poke. With sufficient time fought, the contest went to a technical decision that fell the way of “The Kung Fu Kid.”
As is often the case when an athlete doesn’t continue following a foul, Cejudo has faced flak from some fans and figures in the sport who have accused him of quitting.
During a recent episode of his Good Guy/Bad Guy show alongside Daniel Cormier on ESPN MMA’s YouTube channel, Sonnen became the latest to question whether Cejudo really couldn’t continue.
“I’m essentially accusing possibly the greatest combat athlete of all time of cheating, of faking,” Sonnen said. “That is just so unlike Henry. I mean, truly so unlike Henry in the way that he did play it. This is a guy who has walked through fire many times.
“This is a guy who walked through fire at 20 years old to become an Olympic champion. It didn’t seem like he was willing to walk through fire this night. That was not like the Henry Cejudo that I’ve seen in the past. As fair as I can say it.”
Tim Welch, the coach of former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley, shared a similar take. In a social media post, the trainer suggested that Cejudo knew he had “nothing left for Song.”
The 2008 Olympic gold medalist has unsurprisingly not taken kindly to such accusations, and he took to X himself to list the injuries he apparently sustained to his eye as a result of Song’s poke.
