Chael Sonnen spent Sunday’s episode of his podcast handing the microphone to a longtime friend of Andrew and Tristan Tate, and by Monday morning a chunk of the MMA commentariat was accusing him of running cover for the two brothers rather than interviewing anyone.
The guest was Luke Barnatt, a former UFC middleweight who now works as a commentator for the European promotion Oktagon MMA. Barnatt has known the Tates for the better part of fifteen years, and he made no effort to frame himself as a neutral party going into the conversation.
“I’ve been side by side with these guys for years, known them 15 years. So they’re very, very close to me and good friends of mine,” he told Sonnen.
From there, the segment turned into an extended brief for the defense. Barnatt spent much of his time on the brothers’ ongoing legal issue, including their reported stretch in isolation amid extradition proceedings, arguing that none of it has anything to do with the specific allegations against them and everything to do with shutting down their online reach.
“It is 100% politically motivated by the UK to get them off the internet,” he said. “They have been after them for years and years and years because of their message.”
Sonnen, who has said he has only met Andrew Tate once, offered some pushback, though it was gentle. At one point he raised the possibility that the Tate persona itself is an act.
“I’ve even come to you and gone, man, is this a work? Is this a performance? Because he has mastered social media,” he said.
Even so, he let Barnatt run with the argument, which stretched to a comparison with Michael Jackson’s public collapse and a claim that a UK government fund had poured 2 billion pounds into school programming aimed at turning students against the Tates.
Barnatt wrapped up his case by thanking his host for the runway he’d been given. “You didn’t have to do this to have me on to talk about the tapes, talk about their situation. Shows what a standup guy you are and how you understand what’s going on,” he said.
Sonnen has not backed away from the format. Asked about airing the exchange without pushback on the underlying allegations, he said the show answers to no one but itself. “Nobody will tell us the content we can put out. We will talk about what we want to talk about,” he said.
A separate clip circulating from Sonnen showed him going further than simple hosting, describing personal discomfort with how the brothers were taken into custody.
“I don’t like that they were grabbed Luke,” he said, adding a suspicion that someone in a position of authority ought to have stepped in before it got that far. “I feel there is an adult somewhere in the room that’s saying hey wait a minute we don’t just give our guys to a different country,” he said.
That framing landed badly with critics who point out that the brothers’ current predicament traces back largely to their own circle rather than any outside conspiracy.
British prosecutors added 38 fresh charges against Andrew and Tristan in July, bringing the combined total to 59 counts tied to seven accusers across offenses alleged between 2010 and 2017. Assistant Chief Constable Carina Thomas laid out the scale of it directly: “As a result, 38 new charges in total have now been authorized against Andrew and Tristan Tate, bringing the total number of charges faced to 59. The charges relate to seven vi*tims spanning a period from 2010 to 2017.”
The path that put them in reach of US authorities did not come from a government plot either. Streamer Adin Ross previously said Andrew told him directly that he intended to leave Romania for good.
“Andrew had hit me up. He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be leaving Romania soon and probably never coming back,'” Ross said.
Tristan, for his part, is on record acknowledging just how exposed the brothers had become once new charges opened the door to a fresh warrant, writing that they would need to stay put and lawyer up.
Andrew’s own public confidence didn’t age well either. “So no country will extradite me. So I’m traveling the world completely free,” he once said, not long before he was taken into custody in the United States.
Commentator Trent Reinsmith was among those unwilling to let Sonnen’s framing pass without comment, dismissing the idea that Sonnen’s on-air persona is separate from how he actually operates.
“MMA media will tell you that Chael Sonnen is just playing a character and that he’s really a nice guy (to them). The thing about that is, f*ck Chael Sonnen,” Reinsmith wrote.
Robert Joyner took aim at the former UFC fighter, writing, “Chael carrying water for the Tate Brothers…. Sonnen is such a foul character, but like a pig in the slop that is the MMA space, wallowing about and happy as can be…”
Another critic was even more direct in his assessment of Sonnen’s motives. “Running defense for PDFs in preparation for his political career? Crafty move,” the account wrote.
The criticism did not stop there, with another commenter arguing that Sonnen’s reputation as a heel may have actually helped disguise his true character. “The thing about Chael is that he is a genuinely bad person who managed to cover that up by pretending to be a bad person and it tricked like 95% of the MMA community,” the commenter wrote.
Barnatt also used the appearance to talk up Octagon’s expansion across Europe, pointing to a September 26 show in Frankfurt that organizers hope will draw a bigger crowd than the 63,000 fans who turned out for last year’s event.
