Was Chael Sonnen hacked? UFC vet reacts to puzzling Twitter takeover, bizarre ransom demands

Chael Sonnen went on a Twitter rampage earlier this week, lambasting everyone from UFC CEO Dana White to former two-division champion Conor McGregor. The incendiary tweets have since been taken down, but the screenshots are still making the rounds on social media.

Have a look:

The former middleweight title challenger, who now holds a “weird” spot in the UFC hall of fame, addressed the since-deleted tweets on his official YouTube page.

“I have been hacked! ‘I have been hacked’ are the words of almost every fool who puts something out on social media and didn’t wanna have to own it,” Sonnen explained. “It’s not my first time though. The last time I got hacked I began selling PlayStation 5. More than anything it was a nuisance. Fast-forward ... I wanna say this happened to me two other times but if I’m wrong it’s one other time and here we are now. I’ve been hacked.”

“Well, I’ve been hacked by a friendly hacker,” Sonnen continued. “Like, the hacker himself has got a hold of me to let me know that it is him, and that if I would like the passwords back, all I need to do is say to him ‘I would like the passwords back.’ Now that seems very simple — like it seems simple to the point that I haven't done it. I’m assuming even if I don’t know the scam, or how it’s done, that when I reply to this message that is when greater access into my private life begins.”

Maybe the hacker was targeting the “other” Chael P. Sonnen?

“So, though it was a friendly enough hack, not demanding Bitcoin, by the way, not demanding anything,” Sonnen added. “Not demanding an apology, not demanding I learned my lesson for this that, and the other, just let him know and he will give it back. And this case being a little different that I have had some people reach out to me about tweets that are going out to where an explanation was needed, to where I bothered them. And that part of it was a little unexpected, in my opinion.”

“I don’t know what the rush would be,” Sonnen said. “I don’t know what the real fun would be if you’re impersonating somebody on social media and you’re only gonna get into it for a couple of days and you’re going to get shut down. I would understand the Bitcoin, theft, monetize, value. If there isn’t any of that and the hacker was nice enough to contact me, tell me I can have my codes back ... maybe when I get them back and I go into my DM’s I’ll have a little bit different opinion. Right now it just seems like a guy that had a skill, wanted to show he had it, got a power of ol’ Chael P. and decided to use it. I wanna be mad about it, it’s definitely an inconvenience. It’s also a pretty good skill. I’d like my codes back but I’d rather he taught me how he did it.”

The 47 year-old Sonnen is coming off a boxing loss to longtime rival Anderson Silva last month in Brazil and is no doubt working on future QR codes for the upcoming release of PlayStation 6.