Bellator star Chael Sonnen watched Mike Jackson and CM Punk’s fight at UFC 225, and where many onlookers saw a clumsy tilt between two unskilled hopefuls, he claims to have seen something different.

He gave his take on the fight on a recent episode of his Beyond The Fight podcast.

“I appreciated that match,” Sonnen said (transcribed by Milan Ordoñez for BloodyElbow). “I think that Mike Jackson deserves some credit. Look, he’s not very good. People seem to be making that the focal point. I feel that they’re just missing the story that two guys had a dream, two guys were given the opportunity, and two guys got matched up, and we do have to admit very well that that was the right skill vs. the right skill, the right experience vs. the right experience.”

“I thought that CM Punk showed a lot of heart, I don’t think you guys would disagree with me,” Sonnen continued. “As far as a ton of skill, he’s only done it one time. Going into the fight, he’s only done it one time, now he’s only done it two times. What the hell do you want from the guy?”

“You had a guy go out there, dig deep and push for 15 minutes in a combat sport, hard to do — and I’m putting a little bit of a bow on it, that is true. It was a lesser quality that you would see in many pay-per-view fights. That’s true, but there was still something there.”

“We tuned in for a reason, and any other expectations that we put on that, we put on that falsely. We got what we should have got. We got what we should have expected. And I think that the heart and the grit of both guys needs to be what’s remembered, not the skill. They’ve both only been in there a couple of times between them. Not even all the fingers on my right hand.”

What do you think of Chael Sonnen’s comments on UFC 225’s Mike Jackson vs. CM Punk fight?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/15/2018.