It was an anti-climatic finish to the second fight between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen at UFC 148.
After a dominating first round that saw Silva charge immediately at Sonnen and then get double legged and held on the ground for five minutes, Silva pulled off a victory in convincing fashion.
Sonnen angered Silva to a whole new level going into this fight. It seemed like a bad idea to anger a man who can destroy you in just any way humanly possible. Though was this the ultimate downfall for Sonnen?
The answer is really simple: No.
See Sonnen‘s one mistake wasn’t angering Silva. The huge mistake was throwing a spinning backfist that led to him slipping. Sonnen couldn’t get the second round to go like the first round.
Sonnen took Silva down instantly in the first and with a lot of ease, but in the second round he couldn’t do it and seemed different from the first round. Now instead of Silva getting dominated, Sonnen was getting out-struck and didn’t have a good answer for the amount of strikes thrown his way.
The one key mistake was the spinning backfist. That’s a move that should be only be thrown under supreme confidence that you can land it—which if Sonnen did, I’m shocked. Silva’s the best fighter at avoiding strikes, and throwing something like that won’t surprise him. It will have trouble landing.
The anger might have played a sub-role to the spinning backfist. Sure, behind every punch Silva threw there was a little hate peppered on. Every punch meant something. One punch for disrespecting my family. Another for disrespecting my teammates. A knee to the body—yes it was to the body, people—for his home country.
Sonnen did the right thing in trying to hype up the fight and it worked. You can’t go wrong with the record breaking numbers UFC 148 did. But to say that angering Silva was the downfall is pointless. Sonnen made his mistake in the ring and not outside it.
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