Chael Sonnen did not expect John Martin to part ways with the PFL.
Martin stepped down as CEO of MVP-PFL just a couple of months after the two companies merged. In his statement, Martin supported MVP chief Nakisa Bidarian to lead the new MMA promotion instead.
It was just 14 months ago that Martin took over for Peter Murray, who had served as PFL CEO since 2018. Sonnen thought Martin brought the experience and passion for the job, which is why the announcement caught him off guard.
"His resume is so wildly impressive if you spend a couple seconds looking at that," Sonnen told MMA Junkie of Martin. "But yeah, I was surprised that he stepped down. They did the merger, and it seemed as though he got promoted. He was going to not just be CEO of PFL,
but of the entire thing. I was surprised and then I was a little bit disappointed with the announcement. Like I just long for the day when somebody comes out and says, 'I hate all of you. You have all let me down, you have all disappointed me, you don't deserve my leadership anymore, and I'm out of here. Best of luck to whatever's left to the rest of you.'
"Like I do wish that would happen. I don't really get the whole, 'Oh, I'm so proud, and I'm so great, but I'm going to go do something else.' I don't believe it's insincere. I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, but if he was proud and he enjoyed it, I think that he would stay. And you know, sometimes follow my mom's golden rule: Keep your mouth shut if you don't have something nice to say. But if you're going to come out and speak, tell the truth, and there was nothing about what they did in the last year that he's proud of, or he would have stuck around."
Many ponder if Martin publicly criticizing ESPN for its lack of promoting PFL while trying to negotiate a new deal was part of it, but Sonnen sees nothing wrong with that.
"He was completely right to do that," Sonnen said. "You want to know who else attacked ESPN and then ended up in a deal with them? Dana White. Martin did nothing wrong. He called those guys out. He said, 'You're my broadcast partner, and aside from broadcasting, you don't provide any partnership.' He was right to do that. I don't blame him for being a little bit pissed about it. I mean, sometimes to make an omelet, you've got to crack a few eggs. I thought that was one of the better things that he did over there. Now, let me ask you this: I read that thing, and I thought that he talked about Nikisa, how they worked together, but somebody else had read it and told me that he had announced that Nikisa was now running things. I don't think that was part of it. ... OK, but, again, I think that's open to interpretation. I know that Nikisa would be in charge until he's not in charge. I mean, are we done? You get up and walk out of the room. I don't know.
"I think that it's a little bit unclear whether they might be elevating somebody or even bringing somebody else in. Look, it's very hard to have a television executive if you don't have a television deal in place, and those waters just got a little more murky. I know we all think that Netflix is going to grab this and run or DAZN's already got their hand in it. That could be true, but it also might not. It's very hard to keep a secret, and I only share for you all of a sudden this space where you don't have a broadcast deal just got more crowded because Scott Coker stepped into things. And Scott Coker has never had a problem landing major TV deals. So, I don't know. I always wonder if there's more to it. I'm snoopy. I've got to know everybody's business. But to thank the team and thank the board for what? Because you got paid every month or because you're never getting paid again? Because you're the one that they elected or you're the one that they outed? I never got that. I never really got that sincerity."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Chael Sonnen suspects something amiss about John Martin's PFL exit
