Chael Sonnen: Aldo threatening to sue me and the UFC

In the weeks leading up to and the days following UFC 189 a war of words took place. Not, as one might assume, between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo or between Conor McGregor and Chad Mendes, or even between Conor McGregor and Urijah Faber (although all those took place too). In fact, this was a verbal battle in which McGregor was more of a minor instigator than a root cause. This battle was between Jose Aldo and the UFC.

After Aldo withdrew from his fight with McGregor citing a fractured rib, the UFC were quick to correct his and his medical team's report. The UFC cited it's own medical liaison, Jeff Davidson (as well as two other unnamed doctors), saying that their analysis of Aldo's injury showed bruising and damage to an older injury, a break in calcified cartilage to be exact, and not a fractured rib as Jose Aldo's camp claimed. Furthermore, Dana White and the UFC went as far as to suggest that Aldo's fears that he would be unable to make weight were at the root of him pulling out of the fight. The ribs weren't broken, Aldo was medically cleared, but he didn't think he could get himself on the scale at 145.

That was the information Chael Sonnen says he repeated (along with claims that Aldo's camp released different x-rays publicly than the ones the UFC got), and in a recent episode of his "You're Welcome" podcast the former UFC title contender claims that it almost got him sued by Aldo's legal team (transcript via SportsJoe.ie h/t MMAmania):

"I get a phone call. So I answer it on the car speaker. It's a lawyer from Brazil threatening to sue me for defamation. Her client? Jose Aldo.
...
"They said, 'we won't sue you if you stop talking about it.' I said, 'Hold on, I'll go a step further than that, if I said it and it's not true, I'll give them an apology.' I don't want to go around saying the guy put out two X-rays if that's not true, but I'm a little confused here. I parroted this information, I heard it and I repeated it, so where did this story come from? I heard this at a UFC press conference.

"The attorney said, 'yeah, well pay attention in the next few days, you won't hear the UFC saying it anymore because before we called and threatened you with a lawsuit, we called and threatened them with a lawsuit.'

"I have to assume he's telling the truth. Jose Aldo is threatening to sue me and claims that he threatened to sue the UFC. That's a pretty big bluff. That's a big enough bluff that I think he's telling the truth."

Standing alongside Dana White's recent comments to media telling them, "Don't even ask me about his injury or any of that sh-t." It sounds like there could be some truth to Sonnen's story that Jose Aldo got himself all lawyer-ed up over this war of words between himself and the UFC.