Chael Sonnen Warns Benoît Saint Denis Against Making 'Excuse' For UFC 299 Loss: 'That Is Never A Good Look...'

During a video recently uploaded to his YouTube channel, Sonnen reflected on the UFC 299 co-headliner and reacted to Saint Denis' first statements since falling to the knockout loss.

As well as suggesting that Navy SEAL equivalents like ex-French military man Saint Denis don't typically make excuses, Sonnen insisted that the lightweight contender's performance was already enough to push his stock up. 

"Saint Denis coming out and talking about the loss, said, 'I wasn't able to express myself fully.' ... Talking about the antibiotics he used to answer for the staph infection that we all became aware that he had," Sonnen said. "I don't know how to share my thoughts on that without giving Saint Denis a hard time, and I don't wanna give him a hard time... He was one of the performances of the night. Outcome of the night went to Poirier, the performance of the night? He outperformed Poirier!

"There is no way around the fact that there is now an excuse being made, and that is never, that I've seen, a good look," Sonnen continued. "I've never seen the audience accept it... I don't see anything bad that comes from the performance. Saint Denis outperformed Poirier... I don't know what Saint Denis needs to speak of. And somebody like him, who's the equivalent of a Navy SEAL, they're just not known for excuses, which is why I don't wanna call it out! I've never seen somebody after the fact use an excuse and have it work."

Talk of the Frenchman suffering from an infection pre-UFC 299 was prevalent after his fight week photoshoot, which appeared to show a clear abscess toward the top of his forehead. With that in mind, confirmation of the illness didn't come as a huge surprise.

But although some have seen it as reason to praise Saint Denis' performance in the first round even more, the likes of Sonnen would seemingly have preferred it not to have been addressed.