UFC - Anderson Silva

So here's a little taste of my opinion on Silva. Anderson "The Spider" Silva is Brazilian fighter who has been the UFC Middleweight Champion since he took the belt from Rich Franklin in 2006. He has defended the title 10 times!! A couple times didn't count for different reasons such as his opponent not making weight. But none the less, I take nothing away from his talent. He is an amazing, skilled fighter who has decisively finished fight after fight most often by TKO or KO. His record is something ridiculous like 27-4 while he is undefeated in the UFC! When I first started following the UFC I thought Silva was incredible. His fights usually started the same way, the first round is a little slow, he doesn't throw many punches, just sits back and gets a feel for his opponent. An understandable technique but not the most entertaining. 


Before his appearance at 117 my opinion of Silva had greatly changed. It all started with his fight against Thales Leites at UFC 97. It went all 5 rounds and featured the acting debut of Anderson "Showboat" Silva. He danced around the ring like a goof, not an athlete! At UFC 101 he started the first round with the same showboating and dancing then sent a lazy looking knockout punch against Forrest Griffin! After seeing this I figured alright I can deal with the dancing if he is going to finish the fight like this. (Side note, right after the knockout, Griffin got up and ran out of the ring, didn't even wait around to hear the official announcement, everyone thought that was a bitch move, later he announced he wasn't running out of the ring because he was embarrassed, he ran out because his jaw was broken! I still like Griffin.) But then... the exact same thing the happened at 97 occurred at UFC 112 against Demian Maia. The first couple rounds were exciting because I knew the power that SIlva had, he could decide when ever he wanted to end this fight, just like he did with Griffin, it would only take one shot. But to my disappointment he did nothing of the sort, again it went all 5 exhaustingly boring rounds. Every time Maia was knocked down he just laid there, waiting for Silva to do something. (Another little side note, in Maia's most recent fight against Mario Miranda he did the same thing when he was knocked down, snooze and obviously frustrating for his opponent). But anyway, there he went again, showboating and not finishing, I don't have any respect for that. It's not entertaining or exciting and its disrespectful to the sport. Dana White obviously agreed as he left the fight against Maia in Abu Dhabi and handed the belt to Silva's team to put on him. A job he usually does himself.  To my knowledge, Dana has never left a fight early. 


So at UFC 117 in California I really felt he needed to END the fight. Leading up to the fight Chael Sonnen did a lot of trash talking. Usually I find that arrogant and annoying but the way Sonnen does it I actually find it funny. Mostly because he doesn't attack a fighter personally. I know that doesn't make sense but he says things like "If Brock Lesnar was here right now, I'd take my boot off and throw it at him, and he'd better polish it up before he brings it back to me". He doesn't says things like this guy doesn't deserve to be a fighter or in the UFC. Moving on to the actual fight, Sonnen has been the first fighter in recent history to actually bring a fight to SIlva. He attacked him and took him down time after time. He dominated the first 4 rounds. I was a little nervous he was going to pull a Brock Lesnar and make a silly mistake and fall into a submission. (The way Brock Lesnar did against Frank Mir the first time they fought). Thankfully he did not do that and in the 5th round SIlva decided to show up. It was a pretty even matchup and Silva ended up getting the submission. The stoppage was controversial in itself, it looked like Sonnen tapped once then decided not to and the ref was confused so he started to pull the fighters apart then let them keep going. In the end Sonnen did tap, its not wwe, you don't have to tap three times and if the UFC starts to let fighters tap once and keep going it will just open a big can of worms of faking out and throwing off opponents. So as frustrated I was with the ref and the end result, a win is a win, good for Silva.