Sonnen Replaces Herman, To Fight Miller at UFC 98
Chael Sonnen
Hours after being unofficially confirmed as the replacement for an injured Yushin Okami, Ed Herman has apparently been bumped from the UFC 98 card for undisclosed reasons and replaced by Chael Sonnen, who will now meet Dan Miller on May 23rd in Las Vegas.
Sonnen (21-10-1), an import from the WEC following the demise of it’s middleweight division late last year, suffered a first-round submission loss to Demian Maia at UFC 95 in February in his UFC return. He had been booked to fight Wilson Gouveia at UFC 102 in August, but will square off with Miller in the interim. The August 29th matchup is still likely to take place, but hinges on the outcome of the May bout and Sonnen’s ability to emerge injury free.
Miller (11-1), a former IFL middleweight champion, is on the rise in the UFC’s 185-pound division with three-straight victories inside the octagon over Rob Kimmons, Matt Horwich, and Jake Rosholt.
I’m not sure Herman or Sonnen should be tagged as an “awesome replacement challenger,” but a late replacement is a late replacement.
Stay tuned to MMAFrenzy.com for the latest UFC 98 news.
Tags: Chael Sonnen, Dan Miller, Ed Herman
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I’m still disappointed that Okami is out, but this is much, much better.
Okami getting injured is a tough break for that guy. He’s a very ignored guy for a top contender, and this was his chance to showcase on ppv again. $hitty buzz.
ya this is better imo former IFL champ vs former WEC champ
I really dont like sonnen..at all.
Why?
I will tell you why, because in his last 3 fights sonnen has looked absolutely horrible. I have no problem with chael and i actually used to be a fan of his, but his extremely poor performances as of late have forced me to reconsider. ANYBODY who watched sonnens last fight with paulo saw that he was basically fighting a zombie and demonstrated ZERO aggression. That was one of the most pitiful displays of mixed martial arts that I have seen in my 13 years as an mma fan. His win before that over bryan baker was far less than impressive. And while he does have a few good wins early on in his career, most notably to mayhem, jason lambert,and trevor prangley. But, you cannot argue that he has lost in almost every fight in which he stepped up to fight elite competition. Lost to prangley(in their first fight),forest, jeremy horn(x3),terry martin, babalu,filho in first fight(although he was winning before got caught) and maia. Furthermore he is not an exciting fighter who has shown very little aggression lately and doesnt seem to have any interest in inflicting any damage to his opponents.
Still kinda weak in my mind. Someone awesome is not Sonnen in my opinion.
This is a much better opponent than Herman, but I’m still not sure if it quite qualifies as “awesome”. Maybe the UFC will learn from this and not play up their replacement fighters so much in the future. I wonder what caused them to bump Herman, if it was all the backlash from people that he wasn’t actually “awesome” or maybe he didn’t get bumped and someone had talked to people at Quest (where both guys train) to get the story, and they got the wrong guy for the story. Or maybe Herman decided that if he was fighting for his job he didn’t want to face someone likely to give him the boot, because my money would have been on Miller for that fight, actually still is, but this should be a much better fight than Herman v. Miller would have been.
Amen Justin!!
imo the ufc has been on the net an didn’t like what the fans were saying so they got rid of ed an got sonnen in instead, i like the match up, ide still give the edge to miller but should be an intresting fight.
Sonne is a better opponent than Herman,but i’m still not satisfied with the “awesome” promise for an “awesome” replacement, but Sonnen is a better opponent. Fight still sucks though