THE NEWS THAT Mark Munoz has had to pull out of his scheduled fight with Chael Sonnen has strangely sparked an outcry of jubilation amongst UFC fans.

This is due to the fact that Michael Bisping has stepped in to replace Munoz, pitting two of the sport’s most privy verbal artistes against each other, inside the Octagon.

For maybe the first time in UFC history, the fans are looking forward to the build-up to the fight more than the fight itself.

The only downside to that is, Bisping took the fight on short notice and it is happening in just over a week on 28 January.

The Verbal sparring has already begun

No sooner than Dana White announced the match-up, Twitter sprung to life, with both fighters getting their first volleys off.

@sonnech fired first tweeting, “Spent months training to fight Munoz now I have to fight a guy who sounds like “PIP” from South Park.”

Simultaneously, @bisping rather lamely announced, “Unlucky for Chael Sonnen. I’m now fighting him next week. Tune in, jan 28th, fox tv. Fight of the year mofo’s.”

Round two

The Englishman, a regular participant in “most hated fighter” polls, regained enough composure in a series of interviews to hit back in the second round of trash talking by saying,

“He’s been kicked out of politics, kicked out of real estate, and I am going to kick him out of the middleweight division.”

When this was put to Sonnen he replied with: “I am going to knock the teeth out of this snot nosed Brit who calls himself royalty, who calls himself a Count….I am MMA royalty and America will tune into the Chael Sonnen show next Saturday on FOX.”

Expect more of the same in the lead-up to the fight, until then, here’s a collection of Sonnen’s best sound bites.

Credit: TicketsCanada.

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