We are all well used to shocking claims from Team Sonnen, but this one will make your jaw drop. According to his coach Scott McQuarry, the middleweight motor-mouth is actually… a very nice person in ‘real life’.

McQuarry spoke to Fighters Only this week about Sonnen’s camp and his preparations for this weekend’s fight at the UFC on FOX 2 event. He faces Michael Bisping in a middleweight contender’s elimination fight.

Asked what Sonnen’s persona is like when the cameras are not rolling and the media aren’t asking the same questions over and over again, McQuarry revealed something that the Oregon man never wanted you to know: he has a heart of gold.

“[His persona off-camera] is probably like 180 degrees. What a lot of people see in promoting the fights, that rubs them the wrong way… well, it promotes the fight. In private he is really the nicest guy you could ever meet,” McQuarry told us.

“He is the kind of guy, I can phone him at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning and say I have got a kid in my gym from the Make A Wish foundation who really wants to meet you, and he will drop everything he is doing and will be there in ten minutes.

“And that’s just one example, there are numerous examples I could give you of the type of person he really is.”

McQuarry has taken an increasingly prominent role in training Sonnen over the last eight months and, steeped in Muay Thai and his beloved art of judo, he has been able to add some interesting things to Sonnen’s game. But he has also learned from Sonnen and he thinks others can as well.

“I’ve learned how to promote a fight - he does it better than anyone I have ever seen. He is the most colourful personality in MMA, people are drawn in and I wish more fighters would do this, it would take the sport to another level,” he says.

“It doesn’t need to be like WWE wrestling but do more than just yes, no, I respect my opponent. I think we take the steps and see where it goes.”

Sometimes of course, Sonnen goes where nobody has gone before and he has occasionally crossed the line of good taste with his unwavering frankness and willingness to level his verbal 12-bore at anyone and anything.

McQuarry agrees that could be the case, but he sees Sonnen as essentially re-inventing the MMA promotion game at present and he thinks that he deserves to be cut some slack accordingly. Sonnen, says McQuarry, is learning as he goes and is not incapable of spotting his own mistakes.

“He has maybe made some mistakes or think that went a little too far. He has probably said a couple of things in the last year or two where he has thought back and thought, ‘maybe I shouldn’t have said that,’  because of the repercussions or whatever. Its a learning process just like anything else.”

The fight with Michael Bisping takes place as the co-main event of tomorrow night’s UFC on FOX 2 event in Chicago, Illinois.