Chael Sonnen took the time to sit down with us and talk about Submission Underground 2

Former UFC champions Jon Jones and Dan Henderson will headline Submission Underground 2 on Dec. 11. The event, co-presented by FloSports and Chael Sonnen, will be streamed live to an international audience exclusively on FloGrappling.com.

For those who don’t know, Submission Underground is a submission grappling event whose sole aim is to determine the best submission fighters in the world. This marks the second such event, with the first taking place in July of this year.

Along with Jones vs. Henderson, FloSports also booked a matchup between former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate and well-known MMA veteran Jessica Eye, who will co-headline the submission-only event in a rematch of their UFC on FOX 16 fight in July 2015.

FanSided recently had chance to sit down with Sonnen to preview what fans should expect for the entire night of grappling.

José Youngs: Chael, we’re obviously here to talk about Submission Underground 2. Now the main event is Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson. You’ve obviously fought Jones and you’ve known Dan Henderson for many years. In terms of the actual matchup, everyone knows Jon’s reach, athletics, elbows and other weapons play a huge factor in an MMA fight. But when that’s taken away from him, how do you see him his skills translating into a grappling match against Dan Henderson, who has a background in Olympic wrestling?

Chael Sonnen: It’s an interesting question isn’t it? It goes for both of them. Jon Jones has his reach, which is the biggest tool he uses in MMA, and Dan Henderson with the H-Bomb right hand, which is his biggest tool he uses in MMA. So, it’s pretty interesting since we took both of their biggest weapons away. So now you look at the grappling aspect, and on paper it is Dan Henderson, and they’re not even close.

On paper, you’ve got a two-time Olympian [wrestler] right there. So in many ways this is the first competition Jon Jones has been in in a decade that he’s not supposed to win. Now there is no weigh-in, so Jon is going to have the size on him. There’s also another intangible, which is “how good is Jon Jones at wrestling?”

That question never got answered. He won a junior college national title, and then he left school abruptly and never followed through. He went into an MMA career and became the greatest to have ever done it. So there is a question over how far could he have gone. It was the great Cael Sanderson that signed Jon to a big Division-I scholarship, which I’ve ever heard a rumor was a full ride. So Cael Sanderson saw something there but the potential at that stage was never even tested.

JY: It’s interesting you bring up Jon’s wrestling background, because something that stuck out to me the first time he fought Daniel Cormier at UFC 183, Cormier said the wrestling community was behind him. They wanted him to beat Jones. So Jones said he was going to make a point to go out there and prove to Daniel Cormier that he’s the better wrestler. So he basically turned it into a wrestling match and took Cormier down.

Do you think Jon won over the wrestling community, a community you’ve been engrained in for the majority of your lifetime, after that performance?

CS: Yeah, multiple times he took Daniel down. Did he win the respect? Yeah, sure. I think he already had that. But did he win them over? No.

Daniel Cormier is the one the wrestlers will pull for. Jon was pretty upset about that since he was a wrestler himself. He said “you know know this is what I connect with but I pulled the plug on it. I don’t get the same respect for winning a Junior College title that Daniel gets for pursuing a Division I title.” But he was objective and fair, and he was accurate. That is kind of the way it works.

But yeah, their first fight was a shock, wasn’t it? Daniel Cormier had never been taken down in an MMA fight and he gave up three of four takedowns.

JY: Now whenever Jon fights,he always seemed to make a point of, whether it was on purpose or not, to essentially fight using his opponent’s strengths. Like when he fought Glover Teixiera, he used dirty boxing; when he fought Cormier, he turned into a wrestling match; when he fought ‘Shogun’ Rua, he used knees and elbows.

Do you envision that mindset translating over to a grappling match? After all, Dan Henderson is coming in with arguably the greatest background in Greco-Roman wrestling in MMA. So do you envision Jon trying to do that too? To use Dan Henderson’s skills against him to prove a point?

CS: Yeah, I imagine he will. I imagine he’ll try to tie up with him and try and throw him. Jon also has a very good single leg — but Dan Henderson can wrestle. He can wrestle really, really well. And Dan Henderson really wants to win this match. I know Jon does too since these are two really competitive guys. But on paper, they aren’t the same. It’s Dan Henderson. He’s not only an Olympian, but did it twice. I was there when Dan Henderson was named the most outstanding wrestler at the US Open.

So on paper, these guys aren’t close. But there are intangibles. Again, the first out of the gate is the size. It favors Jon Jones and then there’s always been the question over how he is. He didn’t run the course. He went a different path and became a world champion in MMA. So it does make you wonder how he could have gone in wrestling.

JY: Now speaking of actual submission skills, Jon does have a lot of submission wins in MMA. I even remember Brian Stann saying, outside of Chris Weidman and Jon Jones, he can’t remember many fighters that can see a submission once and then just do it without having a black belt. So Jon Jones didn’t have black belt when he was submitting everyone in the UFC and Dan doesn’t have a lot of submission wins in his career. So since this is Submission Underground, and for people who don’t know, how good is Henderson’s submission game? How farfetched is it that he can submit Jones?

CS: I hear your point and I tend to agree with it. There are a couple different ways to go on about your submission career.

Now it’s very unlikely Dan will get caught [with a submission] by anybody. But, you know another relevance is Dan Henderson is a position guy. He finds positions and he holds position. Now under these rules it would be better for him to find submissions, but with the overtime aspect, the positions are very helpful. Now I do get your point. If you get into a game of mercy and the other guy has to tap, that’s not completely what Dan does. He gets to position and holds guys down. But I think he can do quite well, and more importantly than anything is he can defend the submissions.

JY: Let’s get into the co-main event with Miesha Tate vs. Jessica Eye. Jessica has already come out an said she’s taking a year off from MMA. Miesha just retired. What are you expecting in this matchup? Because in terms of the casual fight fans, they know Miesha and Jessica just through MMA — they don’t know them based off their submission skills. So what should fans expect between these two ladies?

CS: They got some kind of a beef and I don’t even know what it is. They have some kind of heat with one another. They fought [at UFC on FOX 16] and Miesha won. Jessica had a good career but Miesha went on to become the Queen of MMA. Somewhere Jessica was pissed off and I don’t have the story. But I want it. But Miesha knew about it and that made Miesha mad.

So we were going all over the board trying to find Miesha a match. We started with a dumby/chicken. I don’t know if this girl is more dumb than she is scared — I guess it’s a combo of the two. Her name is Mackenzie Dern. So we started with her, and at some point you just can’t work with dumb. You just can’t. So we moved on. We went from girl-to-girl-to-girl, jumping around trying to find a match. But when Jessieca Eye’s name came up, boom, Meisha jumped on it instantly. Jessica, when Miesha’s name came up, boom, she jumped on it instantly saying “gimme, gimme, gimme.”

I don’t know what the heat is but they both want this and they’re both confident they can win.

JY: It’s interesting you say there’s beef between the two. There’s also the history between Jon and Dan because they were supposed to fight for the title at UFC 151 all those years ago. In MMA, if there’s heat between two fighters, they always say “I can’t wait to punch this guy in the face.”

What is the difference between approaching an emotional matchup in grappling as a opposed to an emotional matchup in MMA?

CS: I don’t know if there is one. I came from a grappling background and then went into MMA. It’s still combat. You operate within the rules but it’s still combat. You go out there and do whatever is within the rules to impose your will and make the other person quit, and who you’re dominant and show you have better technique and positions and whatever it might be. But it’’s still battle. Yeah the rules might change a little bit, but it’s really the same inside.

JY: Now there’s obviously more fights on the undercard. So people thinking of tuning in who only like MMA, is there a fight or two they should keep their eye on?

CS: So we’ve got Ronny Markes vs. Jeff Monson. Ronnie Markes is an absolute stud. He’s fought [wrestling standouts] Aaron Simpson and Yoel Romero. So Ronnie Markes has been all over and he’s fantastic. He’s taking on Jeff Monson, who’s not only fought for the UFC world heavyweight championship but he was the Abu Dhabi world heavyweight championship. So that’s a pretty compelling matchup.

JY: You’ve grappled under other grappling promotions like Metamoris, who had its moments but has its history of the grapplers being unhappy. Now you’re sticking your own name on another promotion. When you approach grapplers, are any of them wary just after what happened with Metamoris or is it simply, “I’m Chael Sonnen and you can trust me”?

CS: It’s the latter one. You can always take the word of a gangster but it’s a fair point. Whenever you get into an industry that has any level of corruption … I mean so many guys don’t want to promote boxing because boxers are so hard to deal with. But boxers are hard to deal with because the promoters are hard to deal with. So there is a relevance of what you’re saying. But from our experience, we haven’t had to deal with anything like that. But I do get your point, it’s a fair one.

Simply put, the best guy always wants to grapple. The best guy always wants to fight. The best guy wants to play football. The best guy wants to play basketball. Whatever the sport is, the best guy always steps forward and we are only trying to find out who the best guy is. That was the entire premise of starting this thing. Let’s pick a rule set, let’s move forward and let’s let the guys come in and prove it.

There’s never been an Olympic Games in history where the right guy doesn’t enter. Never has there been someone putting a gold medal around someone’s neck and someone else is at home going, “Oh I could have done that.” Never.

The right guys step forward. Now after that, who knows. The number four, eight, twelve, fifteen, seventeen … I don’t know. But the right guy? Every time. So yeah, Metamoris had a few bumps. But I got to tell you, it was a fun event.

JY: Have you guys ever thought of creating belts or medals for this promotion? As you said, your goal is to find the best grappler.

CS: Oh yeah. We’ll create divisions for sure. It’s one of the reasons … actually it’s THE reason we took the [Eddie Bravo Invitational] rule system. You have the Abu Dhabi rule system and you could even come out with your own rule system. But it doesn’t make any kind of sense.

Grappling has been a disorganized mess from the jump and it deserves to be. There’s been no conformity. Every time they come up with an event, they make their own rule set. It’s very hard to go anywhere with that. If you’re a football player, you walk into any football field in the world and the rules are the same. You’re a basketball player and you walk onto any court in the world, the rules are the same. You walk onto a jiu-jitsu mat, you got no idea what the hell the rules are. So there’s no conformity, which means there’s no stars, which means there’s no respect. There’s nobody we can look at and go, “Oh yeah there’s the guy.” It’s because they never banded together and actually figured it out.

So with the EBI rules, because EBI is specifically a tournament format, there has to be a winner so somebody can advance. No, we do a dual meet format or a superfight format, there’s still a winner. Now what you can do if you have a winner and you have a loser is you can advance a guy so you can have a type of architecture to form divisions. Then you can you can figure out number one contender matches and championship matches. That’s something that some of the other grappling promotions missed out on. So they can never crown somebody the best. If you can’t do that, then you can’t build a star. And if you can’t build a star, then you cannot build a brand.

JY: Have you thought of, whenever you do crown a champion, taking that person and possibly linking the Eddie Bravo Invitational and finding a single true champion?

CS: Oh yeah. We can do that right now. We have another show coming up in January with two Eddie Bravo Invitational champions coming over in Garry Tonon and Gordan Ryan. They’re going to compete so we’re going to be trading talent with Eddie for sure. Our top guy right now is Vinny Magalhães; he’s our top guy and he’s the best in the world, and he just went over and did Eddie Bravo’s show so we’ll definitely be trading back and forth with talent.

Now Jon and Dan, and Miesha and Jessica, are all UFC fighters or recently retired UFC fighters. And you made the jump over to Bellator. Have you ever thought of using that as a promotional tool? A UFC vs. Bellator grappling match?

CS: I think there’s room for that. But no, we’ve never considered that.

To your point, I think there’s some opportunity to do something there but also an opportunity to bite the hand that feeds you. So even if that happens organically, where two people raise up and one is in this promotion and the other is in that promotion, I don’t know if we would it that way.

I suppose the fans could connect the dots themselves. But no, we’re looking to push the Submission Underground brand and leave it at that and stay out of the MMA promotions.

Chael Sonnen and FloSports present Submission Underground 2 stream live FloGrappling.com Sunday on Dec. 11, at 2:30 p.m. PT. The entire event will be hosted at Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon and will use a cage instead of a standard grappling mat.

To access the live coverage and replays of Submission Underground 2, users must sign up to become FloPRO subscribers on FloGrappling.com.