Chael Sonnen has done a wonderful job of convincing the general public that this matchup is going to be explosive, competitive and worth fifty of their dollars. He's done a good job of personally trying to sell this fight to every fan of MMA and combat sports in general. If it wasn't for one of the other fights on the main card, I probably wouldn't have bought this card if it wasn't for Sonnen's talk.
Maybe if he wasn't talking like this, my preview would look different - perhaps I'd be saying that Anderson Silva will run through him. Then again, that remains a possibility. Anderson Silva is beatable, and it's true that Chael Sonnen is just the type of fighter to exploit that. But is he good enough at what he does?
Probably not. Sonnen hasn't been shy about his gameplan, he'll set up a takedown with a little bit of standup, and then he'll "beat a hole in his face". For Sonnen's sake, his standup had better not last any longer than a couple seconds around, because despite his claims of never being beaten on the feet, the longer he is there, the more chance Anderson has of scoring an explosive knockout.
Providing Anderson Silva will really fight in this matchup (and it's a distinct possibility that Silva won't, keep in mind that his best fights were against fighters he had no problem with, and his worst 'disgrace-to-the-game' fights were against people who insulted him pre-fight), then there's not much Sonnen can do to stop him. Can Sonnen take a round, even two, possibly even three? Yeah, he sure can. If this was a three-round fight, he would be favored a lot more by analysts, but Sonnen hasn't went five rounds and probably can't hold Silva down for three rounds.
Sonnen's only route to victory or scoring a GnP stoppage early in the fight, but much more likely is either a TKO win for Anderson Silva, a submission from the bottom, or a five round audition for Dancing With The Stars for Anderson Silva.