Chael Sonnen shares heartbreaking details on loss of newborn daughter from listeria

The reason mixed martial arts (MMA) fans love to hate Chael Sonnen is because you never know whether he's telling you the truth or giving you some funhouse mirror distortion for lulz and attention. But, underneath the promotional bluster, the real Chael Sonnen is a charismatic and likable guy. No matter how you feel about the MMA heel he often portrays, your heart has to go out to him after he dealt with the terrible tragedy of losing a newborn daughter shortly after her birth last August.

Details have been short up until now, but Sonnen took a break from antagonizing Tito Ortiz leading up to their Bellator 170 fight this Saturday night (Jan. 21, 2017) to open up about the situation in a radio interview with Jim Rome.

“Brittany was sick and we kept going to the doctors, we were at three different emergency rooms and four doctors in total. And they kept telling us it’s dehydration and they kept putting an IV in her and rehydrating her and finally I had to get big and strong and I told the doctor, look nobody knows more about hydration than me not even you doctors you guys don’t ever see dehydration. I come from the one and only field where you have to make weight before you can do your job. If you tried to weigh anybody in any other form of society before you let them work you’d be sued, I know all about dehydration, I wrote a book about dehydration, I said this is not a dehydrated woman, we have to stop with that…there has to be another diagnosis. They put an IV in her. They gave her another liter of saline and it was just so frustrating. And we finally got to the hospital when Blauna was born and the doctors ran a test and she has listeria. And had we known that the whole thing could have been prevented and I don’t blame anybody, but it was very frustrating to just keep being told dehydration."

The only thing that could be worse than losing a newborn is losing one due to a misdiagnosis like this, so we're amazed Sonnen isn't busy suing every doctor involved in his daughter's death to oblivion. Instead, he's spent the past four months working on this comeback from retirement. We can only hope the focus has helped him and his family move forward from this terrible misfortune.

For more news on Chael Sonnen and Tito Ortiz's upcoming fight at Bellator 170, click here.