Chael Sonnen’s catfish radar needs some tuning up. Sonnen recently claimed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out to him to officially announce a fight with Elon Musk.
A Zuckerberg representative quickly denied the report. Strangely enough for the former UFC and Bellator fighter, it wasn’t the first time he’d been catfished. Sonnen revealed on The MMA Hour that he found himself fooled before, this time by former UFC bantamweight Aspen Ladd.
UFC: Chael Sonnen Catfished… Again
“I’ve been catfished before! I got catfished. I got catfished by Aspen Ladd.” Supposedly, the situation occurred early in Ladd’s UFC career. Sonnen had a long back-and-forth messaging exchange with Ladd’s account, only to realize it was, in fact, a representative, and not Ladd herself.
“I get a long DM, and it was very clear that this was a copy and paste. And somewhere in there they made the mistake of referencing Laspen Add, which is not Aspen Ladd, which is not how you would speak.
Right? I’m not going to send you a message and go, ‘Chael Sonnen will be on the such and such.’ I would say, ‘Me, I.’
So I had them. I had them! I called them out on it. I said, ‘Hey, WTF. This is a copy and paste, for one, which changes everything.’
Right? And the gal was like, ‘Oh my God! Yeah, you’re right. I’m not [Ladd]. I thought you knew that. I’m not Aspen Ladd. Here’s who I am.’
She’s a great gal. Friends with [UFC executive] Reed Harris, ends up calling me because she got the number from [a mutual friend]. I’m just saying, it was a small world and she wasn’t trying to fool me, but I was fooled.
It was Aspen Ladd’s account, but she had what the kids call a publicist.”
Aspen Ladd’s UFC career came to a less-than-stellar end as she lost three of her four final fights with the organization. Her time with the UFC was marred by frequent failures to meet the bantamweight limit of 135 pounds.
Ladd has since moved on to the Professional Fighters’ League, where she competes in the featherweight division. Ladd is 2-1 in the PFL so far, winning her most recent fight via second-round armbar.
As for Chael Sonnen, he’s far from concerned about the whole incident. Rather than a deliberate deception, it was more a case of mistaken identity. Regardless, he may want to check who’s messaging him a little more carefully.
