The “American Gangster” Chael Sonnen has signed a deal to work with a professional wrestling company. No, unfortunately he will not be an active participant inside the ring but he will be a commentator for the newly created Global Force Wrestling organization. The announcement was made at The Orleans Arena in Las Vegas by Jeff and Karen Jarrett, who are the ones behind the start-up organization.

Sonnen will serve as the company’s “expert analyst” for their upcoming shows. The GFW is expected to film their first shows on July 24 but the promotion has yet to announce a television deal to air the broadcast.

During his time in the UFC, Sonnen become known for his over the top microphone skills and trash talking ability. It became part of the Sonnen spectacle that earned him many new fans as well as the ire of many fighters. His ability to sell himself and his fights while downgrading his opponents reminded many of the promos often seen in the world of professional wrestling. Practically everyone imagined Sonnen would take part in some form in professional wrestling after his days competing in MMA were over.

GFW’s founder, Jeff Jarrett was a successful professional wrestling for many years having multiple runs with the WWE and WCW starting in the mid 90’s to the early part of the 2000’s. After the WWE purchased and dissolved the WCW in 2001, Jarrett started his own organization called Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling (TNA) in 2002. Soon after its launch Jarrett was able to find a partner in Panda Energy but more particularly Dixie Carter, who is still president of the company. Jarrett parted ways with TNA in 2013.

TNA proved to be a successful investment for Jarrett has he was able to fill a need in a market were the audience was lacking viewing options. After the WWE bought out the WCW there were no other professional wrestling organization airing on cable television. Jarrett and Carter were able to land a deal with Spike TV to air TNA on a weekly basis in 2005. The deal came to a close in 2014 after Spike TV decided it wanted to focus more on combat sports such at MMA, Boxing, and Kickboxing.

Sonnen has remained very active since he stopped competing inside the octagon. He was an analyst for Fox Sports 1 but was let go from the position in 2014 after  his multiple drug tests failings. He was then quickly picked up by ESPN to be their MMA analyst and has been with the company ever since. Sonnen does host a successful podcast entitled “You’re Welcome!” for the PodcastOne network.