Mark Hunt and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva are going to run it back.
The two ranked heavyweights will clash for the second time this weekend at UFC 193. No. 8-ranked contender Hunt and No. 11-ranked Silva battled back and forth to a majority draw in December of 2013. It was a favorite fight of the year, and UFC president Dana White was in love with it—so much so that he sported a special Hunt vs. Silva II shirt at the UFC on Fox 9 weigh-ins just a week later.
And then the post-fight drug tests returned, and Silva was popped for elevated testosterone. A development that “ruined” the fight for White.
Regardless of the extracurriculars surrounding the post-fight shenanigans, Hunt vs. Silva was an amazing fight. It has set the bar high for this rematch, and it is a mark they will fail to clear. Why?
The most obvious reason this fight will not live up to the first encounter is that each fight is unique, and it is very difficult to replicate the same results twice. Lightning rarely strikes twice. The two fighters will be making adjustments to their game plans, and that makes the fight different. Their camps are also different. Hunt has been spending time at AKA Thailand with Mike Swick.
Hunt and Bigfoot are also two years—and three fights—older. Hunt has been knocked out by Fabricio Werdum and brutalized by Stipe Miocic. Silva has suffered two knockouts as well at the hands of Andrei Arlovski and Frank Mir. That damage takes its toll on a fighter’s career.
It’s not particularly likely that they can withstand the same amount of brutality they went through two years ago.
Then there are differences to the fight itself, the most obvious being that this is a three-round affair, not five like their initial meeting. That singular change alters the fight drastically. Even if the fight is great, it will be cut short and fail to give us the extra two rounds we received in 2013.
Seventy of Hunt’s significant strikes and 55 of Silva’s came in the final two frames. Those two rounds were when the fight went from good to great. Hunt only landed 33 significant strikes in the first three rounds combined. He connected on 53 in the fifth round alone. As for Bigfoot? He scored on 42 significant strikes in the first three rounds while putting up 32 in the fourth.
If the UFC expected this fight to replicate the success of its predecessor, wouldn’t they be promoting the fight better?
The UFC has not featured Hunt vs. Silva II with gusto. It has been left off a lot of promotional materials, and they have even shied away from the quick and easy free Internet hits. The UFC typically posts “free fights” to their YouTube page ahead of events, and they did include a Bigfoot Silva fight—except it was against Alistair Overeem, not Hunt. Why wouldn’t they put that on their account and send it out to the masses via their massive social media following?
It’s because they have doubts about how fun this fight will be, and they don’t see the return on investment coming their way.
I am excited about this fight, but I don’t expect it to be a duplicate of the epic war they gave us previously. You should not either. It is a totally different fight that is only going to go 15 minutes at most, and recent results say don’t expect this to hit the scorecards.
Be prepared for a different, less exciting fight. Hunt vs. Bigfoot II will not be the back-and-forth battle we saw in 2013.
Stats provided by FightMetric.
Nathan McCarter is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He can be found on Twitter.
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