The lingering memory of UFC 183 won’t likely be of Anderson Silva slowly picking apart Nick Diaz for five rounds in his comeback fight, but of Diaz’s antics in the Octagon.
In the first round, Diaz came forward talking trash to the Silva and pantomiming for him to come engage. Silva, who has been known to use similar antics in his day (see UFC 162), coolly let Diaz go through his histrionics without joining in. At one point, Diaz stuck his rump out for Silva to behold. At another, he laid down in the cage as if to relax.
It played out as a strange piece of UFC theater, but at the same time, it took nothing away from the fight. If anything, it added some odd dimension to a fight was functioned on curiosity to begin with.
One person who got a kick out of the whole thing was Silva’s friend and manager, Ed Soares, who took the fight in cageside Saturday night in Las Vegas.
“Speaking to my business partner Jorge [Guimaraes], he said that was one of the greatest shoots he’d ever seen,” Soares said during an appearance on the MMA Hour on Monday. “Nick Diaz going and laying down, Nick Diaz doing what he was doing, and not only doing that…but doing that to Anderson Silva?
“I mean, if you’re going to lay down in a mixed martial arts fight in the UFC, you’ve got to have balls. But to do that against Anderson Silva, dude, you’re an a**hole, man. That guy’s got balls.”
Soares meant it more as a compliment derived from awe than anything else. Diaz, who at another time appeared to be picking his underwear from his butt, still stood in with Silva. He wasn’t in there to play games, ultimately. He was trying to win the fight, and that part wasn’t lost on Soares.
“He backed it up. He went out there and went toe-to-toe with him,” he said. “I’ve got nothing but respect for Nick Diaz.”
The lingering memory of UFC 183 won’t likely be of Anderson Silva slowly picking apart Nick Diaz for five rounds in his comeback fight, but of Diaz’s antics in the Octagon.
In the first round, Diaz came forward talking trash to the Silva and pantomiming for him to come engage. Silva, who has been known to use similar antics in his day (see UFC 162), coolly let Diaz go through his histrionics without joining in. At one point, Diaz stuck his rump out for Silva to behold. At another, he laid down in the cage as if to relax.
It played out as a strange piece of UFC theater, but at the same time, it took nothing away from the fight. If anything, it added some odd dimension to a fight was functioned on curiosity to begin with.
One person who got a kick out of the whole thing was Silva’s friend and manager, Ed Soares, who took the fight in cageside Saturday night in Las Vegas.
“Speaking to my business partner Jorge [Guimaraes], he said that was one of the greatest shoots he’d ever seen,” Soares said during an appearance on the MMA Hour on Monday. “Nick Diaz going and laying down, Nick Diaz doing what he was doing, and not only doing that…but doing that to Anderson Silva?
“I mean, if you’re going to lay down in a mixed martial arts fight in the UFC, you’ve got to have balls. But to do that against Anderson Silva, dude, you’re an a**hole, man. That guy’s got balls.”
Soares meant it more as a compliment derived from awe than anything else. Diaz, who at another time appeared to be picking his underwear from his butt, still stood in with Silva. He wasn’t in there to play games, ultimately. He was trying to win the fight, and that part wasn’t lost on Soares.
“He backed it up. He went out there and went toe-to-toe with him,” he said. “I’ve got nothing but respect for Nick Diaz.”
Even if Anderson Silva left things a little up in the air regarding his future after Saturday nights victory over Nick Diaz, his longtime friend and manager Ed Soares doesn’t think we’ve seen the last of the consensus greatest of all time.
Soares appeared on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, and said that not only does he believe the 39-year-old Silva will fight again, but that he’ll fight again at some point in 2015.
“Yeah, I do,” he told Ariel Helwani. “Right now they’re already starting to film [The Ultimate Fighter] Brazil [4], beginning [Monday], so he’s got a pretty tight schedule. He’ll probably be filming TUF until the first week of March, and then I think he’ll take some time off and sit there and see what’s next. But I could definitely see him fighting again in the second half of this year.”
After spending the last 13 months rehabilitating a broken leg and getting back into fight shape, Silva made a triumphant return to the Octagon at UFC 183 in Las Vegas, scoring a unanimous decision over Nick Diaz. Afterwards, an emotional Silva said that his family had pleaded with him to stop fighting, though he didn’t elaborate on whether or not this might be his swan song.
In the aftermath, many fans and media opined that this was a chance for Silva to go out with a victory, having now put away the bad memories of the broken leg he suffered in his title rematch with Chris Weidman at UFC 168. Soares isn’t one of them. And, with the Diaz fight having been novelty of sorts — Diaz returned from a semi-retirement and moving up a weight class from his usual welterweight — he believes there’s a bigger “superfight” that can be made.
“I think that GSP fight would be an incredible fight,” he said, referring to longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. “I definitely think that that would be the fight where if I could be the ultimate matchmaker and say, which fight would I like to see, I’d like to see GSP vs. Anderson Silva. I think as they’re going towards the tail end of their careers, they’re two of the greatest that have ever stepped foot in the Octagon, and neither one of them has a title right now, so this would pretty much be the superfight.
“It would be the biggest fight in UFC history. It would be bigger than UFC 100 with Georges St-Pierre and Anderson.”
While both held titles, the UFC had long talked about doing a St-Pierre-Silva superfight. Silva even showed up to UFC 154 in Montreal and sat cageside when St-Pierre defended his title against Carlos Condit. Yet, St-Pierre was reluctant to mess around with jumping weight classes at the time, and ultimately ceded his belt for a “break” after defeating Johny Hendricks at UFC 167. St-Pierre, now 33, remains inactive in early 2015, though UFC president Dana White is confident he’ll come back to fight again at some point.
After rewriting the record books for title defenses, Silva lost his belt to Weidman at UFC 162. With neither St-Pierre or Silva holding up their respective weight classes as titleholders, Soares thinks the timing is right to make the fight — though he’s not sure what the odds are of it actually materializing.
“I have no idea what the chances are, I mean, that’s a question for Dana, and maybe that’s a question you’d have to ask George St-Pierre,” he said. “I know that Anderson has all the respect in the world for Georges St-Pierre, but I know that that’s a fight that from a fan’s perspective and from a business perspective, it’s a fight that makes sense for everyone involved.
“I know that Anderson and Georges would make a lot of money, and so would the UFC, so it’s a win-win for everyone. Everyone would make a lot of money, and there will be a lot of hype around that.”
Asked if he would pitch the fight to the UFC for when Silva was done filming TUF and ready to go, Soares said that probably wouldn’t be necessary.
“I don’t think I need to pitch it to the UFC, man,” he said. “I think the UFC would want that [fight] just as much or worse than us. I think that if the UFC could be that fight together, they would try to put that fight together.”
Even if Anderson Silva left things a little up in the air regarding his future after Saturday nights victory over Nick Diaz, his longtime friend and manager Ed Soares doesn’t think we’ve seen the last of the consensus greatest of all time.
Soares appeared on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, and said that not only does he believe the 39-year-old Silva will fight again, but that he’ll fight again at some point in 2015.
“Yeah, I do,” he told Ariel Helwani. “Right now they’re already starting to film [The Ultimate Fighter] Brazil [4], beginning [Monday], so he’s got a pretty tight schedule. He’ll probably be filming TUF until the first week of March, and then I think he’ll take some time off and sit there and see what’s next. But I could definitely see him fighting again in the second half of this year.”
After spending the last 13 months rehabilitating a broken leg and getting back into fight shape, Silva made a triumphant return to the Octagon at UFC 183 in Las Vegas, scoring a unanimous decision over Nick Diaz. Afterwards, an emotional Silva said that his family had pleaded with him to stop fighting, though he didn’t elaborate on whether or not this might be his swan song.
In the aftermath, many fans and media opined that this was a chance for Silva to go out with a victory, having now put away the bad memories of the broken leg he suffered in his title rematch with Chris Weidman at UFC 168. Soares isn’t one of them. And, with the Diaz fight having been novelty of sorts — Diaz returned from a semi-retirement and moving up a weight class from his usual welterweight — he believes there’s a bigger “superfight” that can be made.
“I think that GSP fight would be an incredible fight,” he said, referring to longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. “I definitely think that that would be the fight where if I could be the ultimate matchmaker and say, which fight would I like to see, I’d like to see GSP vs. Anderson Silva. I think as they’re going towards the tail end of their careers, they’re two of the greatest that have ever stepped foot in the Octagon, and neither one of them has a title right now, so this would pretty much be the superfight.
“It would be the biggest fight in UFC history. It would be bigger than UFC 100 with Georges St-Pierre and Anderson.”
While both held titles, the UFC had long talked about doing a St-Pierre-Silva superfight. Silva even showed up to UFC 154 in Montreal and sat cageside when St-Pierre defended his title against Carlos Condit. Yet, St-Pierre was reluctant to mess around with jumping weight classes at the time, and ultimately ceded his belt for a “break” after defeating Johny Hendricks at UFC 167. St-Pierre, now 33, remains inactive in early 2015, though UFC president Dana White is confident he’ll come back to fight again at some point.
After rewriting the record books for title defenses, Silva lost his belt to Weidman at UFC 162. With neither St-Pierre or Silva holding up their respective weight classes as titleholders, Soares thinks the timing is right to make the fight — though he’s not sure what the odds are of it actually materializing.
“I have no idea what the chances are, I mean, that’s a question for Dana, and maybe that’s a question you’d have to ask George St-Pierre,” he said. “I know that Anderson has all the respect in the world for Georges St-Pierre, but I know that that’s a fight that from a fan’s perspective and from a business perspective, it’s a fight that makes sense for everyone involved.
“I know that Anderson and Georges would make a lot of money, and so would the UFC, so it’s a win-win for everyone. Everyone would make a lot of money, and there will be a lot of hype around that.”
Asked if he would pitch the fight to the UFC for when Silva was done filming TUF and ready to go, Soares said that probably wouldn’t be necessary.
“I don’t think I need to pitch it to the UFC, man,” he said. “I think the UFC would want that [fight] just as much or worse than us. I think that if the UFC could be that fight together, they would try to put that fight together.”
Thinking back on UFC 168, there was no way Anderson Silva was going to go out kicking and screaming like that. That broken leg he suffered against Chris Weidman was a little too human for any kind of GOAT. This is a guy who transcends things…from big moments to the sport itself, from Usher’s advice to fractured fibulas. He was always going to come back and face some Nick Diaz or other on some must-see Saturday night in the not so distant future.
“The Spider” has made a career out of just that sort of extraordinary.
In 2006, when Silva openly sniped Chris Leben and prompted Joe Rogan to roll out the old “symphony of violence” phrase, it was clear we were indeed dealing with a “different kind of striker.” By 2008, when Silva choked out Dan Henderson, “The Spider” was already an exhibition of greatness. By 2009, when he bewitched Forrest Griffin with preternatural movement and counter voodoo in Philly, there was no question he was the greatest.
With each passing fight, Silva padded his legacy.
Then came Abu Dhabi, and the strange theatrics against Demian Maia, when Dana White threatened to cut the greatest (and now most enigmatic) fighter on the roster if he pulled anything like that again. Remember that? He was either bored or a head case and very possibly both. That led to Chael Sonnen, the most important event in Silva’s life, who galvanized the champ from whatever doldrums he was in and shot him from a cannon into the stratosphere of would-be wonders. Sonnen backed up his unparalleled audacity for four-and-a-half rounds at the Oracle in Oakland, only to become Silva’s greatest conquest in the end. That triangle armbar that he got Sonnen with deep into the fifth round was the capper.
Silva truly was, once again and as ever, the greatest.
When Silva punted Vitor Belfort’s head into the mezzanine at UFC 126, his entourage swayed to the beat. He brought the UFC back to Brazil after a decade at UFC 134, and what a celebration it was in Rio. Silva scored his ninth title defense. He made it ten in an anticlimactic rematch with Sonnen. He came over Stephan Bonnar like a hallucination at UFC 153. It was just too damn easy.
Of course, you know that the record finally skipped when he fought Chris Weidman at UFC 162. That’s when it all caught up to him. There was the dancing and clowning and finally Weidman’s no-nonsense left hand that brought the whole thing to a close. In the rematch, Silva snapped his shin in two on a low kick against Weidman’s knee. He was 38 and the credits were rolling. It was the saddest imaginable end to a career that had been otherwise beyond spectacular.
Only, it wasn’t the end. Here he is headlining UFC 183 at the MGM Grand on Saturday night.
Silva went through the rigors of mending his leg (and his reservations) for the last year and is now ready to try out the new titanium rod against all our wincing memories. Will he throw with the same ferocity he did before the break? That’s the mental hurdle that needs to be cleared. With Silva, a return from something like this goes into his mystique.
But if this Silva is anything like the Silva that reigned from 2006 into 2013, Nick Diaz could be in for a long night. Or a short one. Diaz likes to come forward with volume and pressure. Silva might need to get his bearings for a minute, but then it’s easy to imagine the switch. The wig-out moment he drops his hands and dances. The moment he taunts and sizes things up. The moment he toys and bobs and dekes and then throws something that gets the highlight reel rolling again.
The moment he knows he’s got him.
At least, that’s what we’d expect from the GOAT, even when he’s coming back from a gruesome broken leg with Father Time now a permanent part of his corner. In truth, for any other fighter, the awe would be in just making the walk. It is for Silva, too. It is. Even the most desensitized MMA fan can appreciate the awesome feat of him just being here. Not many people that night in December 2013 thought we’d see him back again.
Then again, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s this: It’s a fool’s game to underestimate Anderson Silva.
Thinking back on UFC 168, there was no way Anderson Silva was going to go out kicking and screaming like that. That broken leg he suffered against Chris Weidman was a little too human for any kind of GOAT. This is a guy who transcends things…from big moments to the sport itself, from Usher’s advice to fractured fibulas. He was always going to come back and face some Nick Diaz or other on some must-see Saturday night in the not so distant future.
“The Spider” has made a career out of just that sort of extraordinary.
In 2006, when Silva openly sniped Chris Leben and prompted Joe Rogan to roll out the old “symphony of violence” phrase, it was clear we were indeed dealing with a “different kind of striker.” By 2008, when Silva choked out Dan Henderson, “The Spider” was already an exhibition of greatness. By 2009, when he bewitched Forrest Griffin with preternatural movement and counter voodoo in Philly, there was no question he was the greatest.
With each passing fight, Silva padded his legacy.
Then came Abu Dhabi, and the strange theatrics against Demian Maia, when Dana White threatened to cut the greatest (and now most enigmatic) fighter on the roster if he pulled anything like that again. Remember that? He was either bored or a head case and very possibly both. That led to Chael Sonnen, the most important event in Silva’s life, who galvanized the champ from whatever doldrums he was in and shot him from a cannon into the stratosphere of would-be wonders. Sonnen backed up his unparalleled audacity for four-and-a-half rounds at the Oracle in Oakland, only to become Silva’s greatest conquest in the end. That triangle armbar that he got Sonnen with deep into the fifth round was the capper.
Silva truly was, once again and as ever, the greatest.
When Silva punted Vitor Belfort’s head into the mezzanine at UFC 126, his entourage swayed to the beat. He brought the UFC back to Brazil after a decade at UFC 134, and what a celebration it was in Rio. Silva scored his ninth title defense. He made it ten in an anticlimactic rematch with Sonnen. He came over Stephan Bonnar like a hallucination at UFC 153. It was just too damn easy.
Of course, you know that the record finally skipped when he fought Chris Weidman at UFC 162. That’s when it all caught up to him. There was the dancing and clowning and finally Weidman’s no-nonsense left hand that brought the whole thing to a close. In the rematch, Silva snapped his shin in two on a low kick against Weidman’s knee. He was 38 and the credits were rolling. It was the saddest imaginable end to a career that had been otherwise beyond spectacular.
Only, it wasn’t the end. Here he is headlining UFC 183 at the MGM Grand on Saturday night.
Silva went through the rigors of mending his leg (and his reservations) for the last year and is now ready to try out the new titanium rod against all our wincing memories. Will he throw with the same ferocity he did before the break? That’s the mental hurdle that needs to be cleared. With Silva, a return from something like this goes into his mystique.
But if this Silva is anything like the Silva that reigned from 2006 into 2013, Nick Diaz could be in for a long night. Or a short one. Diaz likes to come forward with volume and pressure. Silva might need to get his bearings for a minute, but then it’s easy to imagine the switch. The wig-out moment he drops his hands and dances. The moment he taunts and sizes things up. The moment he toys and bobs and dekes and then throws something that gets the highlight reel rolling again.
The moment he knows he’s got him.
At least, that’s what we’d expect from the GOAT, even when he’s coming back from a gruesome broken leg with Father Time now a permanent part of his corner. In truth, for any other fighter, the awe would be in just making the walk. It is for Silva, too. It is. Even the most desensitized MMA fan can appreciate the awesome feat of him just being here. Not many people that night in December 2013 thought we’d see him back again.
Then again, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s this: It’s a fool’s game to underestimate Anderson Silva.
Back in the day, after Nick Diaz was booted from his title shot against Georges St-Pierre at UFC 137 for missing a couple of media obligations, Dana White said he only wished the innocent heart of the 209 would play the game “just a little bit.” Of course, Diaz doesn’t really like games. White figured that out at some point. Now White has learned how to deal with Diaz. Or, at least he says he has.
With White, as with Diaz, who really knows. The only thing that can be taken for granted is that Diaz’s reputation as the dependably undependable anti-authoritarian shy guy hangs around longer than even the most stubborn metabolite. That continues all these years later as we head into UFC 183 for Saturday’s marquee bout with Anderson Silva. Diaz hasn’t fought since March 2013, but he’s still, perhaps more than ever, incredibly Diaz-like. His middle fingers are just as active now as they were when he was 24.
So no, he didn’t make it for the open workouts at the MGM on Wednesday, which is usually just a little song and dance about nothing anyway. This time White stayed ahead of things by putting Diaz on a milk carton and openly wondering where his main event star was via his Twitter feed: #WhereIsNickDiaz?
The “Embedded” series that the UFC puts out during fight week took things further by showing a sad scene at the airport, in which a Southwest airplane — bound for Vegas — made a final boarding call for one Nick Diaz before closing its doors without him. For artistic effect, the camera then showed the jet bridge pulling away, and the plane being pushed out. It was actually beautiful. There goes the plane without Nick.
Furthermore, White — who is in Phoenix for Super Bowl appearances — confessed during an interview with Jim Rome that he didn’t have a clue as to where Diaz was, but he said it like a dad who is used to his incorrigible daughter staying out past curfew. It wasn’t mad…it was more it is what it is, and, you know, there’s no sense harping about it.
The thing is, this is all why people are drawn to Nick Diaz, and why we’ve sort of missed him for the last two years. It’s all the eff-you urges he can’t suppress.
It wouldn’t be a Diaz fight if there wasn’t a lot of strangeness riding sidecar up to the event. Diaz was at the airport but “elected”not to board the flight for Vegas, according to the UFC. There could be any number of reasons for that — nerves, fear of flying, mood, toxic airplane water, forgot to unplug the toaster — but this is just the kind of thing that makes Diaz Diaz. He cannot be governed, not even by himself. If there’s one thing Diaz does well outside of the cage, it’s bafflement. When he explains himself on Thursday, which he surely will try, expect to be further confused.
What draws people to Diaz, and what White has learned to accept, is that, for all his flaws and shortcomings, he’s a great piece of theater. The weigh-ins with him become a must-see event, because god does he get worked up. At the press conferences he makes, you can’t predict a thing that’s about to happen. He’s the anti-cliché. He can accuse the entire room of buying wolf tickets just as easily he can tell you about the soccer moms of Lodi giving him guff. There are full parables and nursery rhymes and disconnected bits of hokum in a typical Diaz response, and it’s all we can do to roll out the leeway. It all glints like gold.
Everything is a roaring conflict, too, including the very thing he’s doing. Diaz will tell you that he doesn’t like to fight. That’s why he keeps retiring. But still, there’s a genuineness to what he’s saying, a piercing sincerity, that makes you wonder — then why keep doing it?
The answer will almost certainly be a long voyage into Diaz’s way of thinking, with plenty of grievances coming to light and non-sequiturs and a full ten miles of digression, but the reason is simple. It’s something he’s good at. Diaz can fight. He is a mixed martial artist beneath it all. He’s a Cesar Gracie black belt, a loyalist through-and-through. He’s a former champion who’s had a career of memorable fights. If he wasn’t good, he wouldn’t be thrust into a main event against Anderson Silva after two years away and riding a two-fight losing streak.
That’s why people just sort of nudge each other when he flakes out on a scheduled event that cuts into his mysterious schedule. If he misses the pageantry, fine, but he doesn’t miss the fight. Everybody knows Diaz will be there Saturday night, performing a necessary evil so that one day he can “acquire a family.”
Diaz is going to Diaz.
And maybe the thing that White has figured out is that he plays the game just enough to keep things compelling.
Back in the day, after Nick Diaz was booted from his title shot against Georges St-Pierre at UFC 137 for missing a couple of media obligations, Dana White said he only wished the innocent heart of the 209 would play the game “just a little bit.” Of course, Diaz doesn’t really like games. White figured that out at some point. Now White has learned how to deal with Diaz. Or, at least he says he has.
With White, as with Diaz, who really knows. The only thing that can be taken for granted is that Diaz’s reputation as the dependably undependable anti-authoritarian shy guy hangs around longer than even the most stubborn metabolite. That continues all these years later as we head into UFC 183 for Saturday’s marquee bout with Anderson Silva. Diaz hasn’t fought since March 2013, but he’s still, perhaps more than ever, incredibly Diaz-like. His middle fingers are just as active now as they were when he was 24.
So no, he didn’t make it for the open workouts at the MGM on Wednesday, which is usually just a little song and dance about nothing anyway. This time White stayed ahead of things by putting Diaz on a milk carton and openly wondering where his main event star was via his Twitter feed: #WhereIsNickDiaz?
The “Embedded” series that the UFC puts out during fight week took things further by showing a sad scene at the airport, in which a Southwest airplane — bound for Vegas — made a final boarding call for one Nick Diaz before closing its doors without him. For artistic effect, the camera then showed the jet bridge pulling away, and the plane being pushed out. It was actually beautiful. There goes the plane without Nick.
Furthermore, White — who is in Phoenix for Super Bowl appearances — confessed during an interview with Jim Rome that he didn’t have a clue as to where Diaz was, but he said it like a dad who is used to his incorrigible daughter staying out past curfew. It wasn’t mad…it was more it is what it is, and, you know, there’s no sense harping about it.
The thing is, this is all why people are drawn to Nick Diaz, and why we’ve sort of missed him for the last two years. It’s all the eff-you urges he can’t suppress.
It wouldn’t be a Diaz fight if there wasn’t a lot of strangeness riding sidecar up to the event. Diaz was at the airport but “elected”not to board the flight for Vegas, according to the UFC. There could be any number of reasons for that — nerves, fear of flying, mood, toxic airplane water, forgot to unplug the toaster — but this is just the kind of thing that makes Diaz Diaz. He cannot be governed, not even by himself. If there’s one thing Diaz does well outside of the cage, it’s bafflement. When he explains himself on Thursday, which he surely will try, expect to be further confused.
What draws people to Diaz, and what White has learned to accept, is that, for all his flaws and shortcomings, he’s a great piece of theater. The weigh-ins with him become a must-see event, because god does he get worked up. At the press conferences he makes, you can’t predict a thing that’s about to happen. He’s the anti-cliché. He can accuse the entire room of buying wolf tickets just as easily he can tell you about the soccer moms of Lodi giving him guff. There are full parables and nursery rhymes and disconnected bits of hokum in a typical Diaz response, and it’s all we can do to roll out the leeway. It all glints like gold.
Everything is a roaring conflict, too, including the very thing he’s doing. Diaz will tell you that he doesn’t like to fight. That’s why he keeps retiring. But still, there’s a genuineness to what he’s saying, a piercing sincerity, that makes you wonder — then why keep doing it?
The answer will almost certainly be a long voyage into Diaz’s way of thinking, with plenty of grievances coming to light and non-sequiturs and a full ten miles of digression, but the reason is simple. It’s something he’s good at. Diaz can fight. He is a mixed martial artist beneath it all. He’s a Cesar Gracie black belt, a loyalist through-and-through. He’s a former champion who’s had a career of memorable fights. If he wasn’t good, he wouldn’t be thrust into a main event against Anderson Silva after two years away and riding a two-fight losing streak.
That’s why people just sort of nudge each other when he flakes out on a scheduled event that cuts into his mysterious schedule. If he misses the pageantry, fine, but he doesn’t miss the fight. Everybody knows Diaz will be there Saturday night, performing a necessary evil so that one day he can “acquire a family.”
Diaz is going to Diaz.
And maybe the thing that White has figured out is that he plays the game just enough to keep things compelling.
As she gets set to fight Miesha Tate this weekend at UFC 183 in Las Vegas, Sara McMann is finally talking about the extraordinary events that surrounded her UFC 170 title fight with Ronda Rousey.
Namely, that her father, who was content to play out the string and die when his cancer came back, opted to go through a course of chemotherapy again to see his daughter fight for the belt.
McMann appeared on the MMA Hour on Monday and discussed the turn of events that convinced her father to continue his fight against his lymphoma.
“He chose not to do chemotherapy, so he was just choosing that he was going to live with the cancer until it killed him…and the cancer that had come back was very aggressive,” she told Ariel Helwani.
“He’d gone months of deciding that he wasn’t going to go through chemotherapy and he wasn’t going to live. The fight happened, and it was basically presented to me as, if you don’t take this fight you may never get a chance to fight Ronda, that she may go into movies and this might be the only opportunity. I was really struggling with it, because I hadn’t been training. Things were really hard for me emotionally. I’m a huge daddy’s girl, so it was really hard for me.
“But when I accepted the fight, he was the first person I told about it. And he decided because of [the title fight], he was going to go through chemotherapy because he didn’t want to die before he got to see me fight.”
McMann said that the lymph nodes in his neck were swelling so bad that “he was literally on the brink of death” before he opted to do the chemo. He’d even gone so far as to divide all his things and got all his affairs in order. She said it was the reason she had to pull out of the fight with Sarah Kaufman
“We had hospice nurses coming to our house,” McMann said. “Every time that I drove up there I was very aware that that was the last time that I was probably going to see my dad. He cut it so unbelievably close to death that it’s ridiculous.
Her father’s slow decline was so hard to take that at one point McMann said she began taking antidepressants. But when matchmaker Sean Shelby presented her the Rousey fight, she knew that the training would break her from the gloom.
“I needed something,” she said. “I’ve trained my whole life. Training is a coping mechanism for me. I knew I needed to prepare for something. I needed to be in a practice room. Not practicing made it hard to deal with my dad.”
Though her father’s still suffering some of the aftereffects, McMann says he’s responded very well to the chemo and that his cancer is now in remission. And it all started with her getting that title shot.
McMann lost to Rousey that night in Las Vegas via TKO early in the first round, after taking a liver kick which double her over on the fence. It has been since debated as to whether or not it was an early stoppage by referee Herb Dean. Though she hopes a win over Tate will be enough to convince the UFC to give her a rematch, she took home some silver linings from that first encounter.
“Essentially no matter how that [Rousey] fight would have gone, I got more time with my dad,” the 2004 silver medalist Olympic wrestler said. “It was going to be a win for me either way.”
McMann rebounded with a victory over Lauren Murphy at UFC Fight Night 47 this past August in Bangor Maine, winning a unanimous decision. That had led her into this big spot against Tate, a fight that will head-up the preliminary action before the pay-per-view portion begins.
McMann had kept hush on her and her father’s story in the lead-up to the event last February. When asked months back by MMA Fighting about why she didn’t want the remarkable story to get out, McMann said that she didn’t want to take anything for granted, and that there was still a long way to go in the process. She wanted to keep the thing private until she knew things were headed in the right direction.
On Monday McMann said that enough time has elapsed where she feels she can talk about it all.
“I’m a lot more comfortable now because the situation is a lot further in the past,” she said. “Now I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it.”
As she gets set to fight Miesha Tate this weekend at UFC 183 in Las Vegas, Sara McMann is finally talking about the extraordinary events that surrounded her UFC 170 title fight with Ronda Rousey.
Namely, that her father, who was content to play out the string and die when his cancer came back, opted to go through a course of chemotherapy again to see his daughter fight for the belt.
McMann appeared on the MMA Hour on Monday and discussed the turn of events that convinced her father to continue his fight against his lymphoma.
“He chose not to do chemotherapy, so he was just choosing that he was going to live with the cancer until it killed him…and the cancer that had come back was very aggressive,” she told Ariel Helwani.
“He’d gone months of deciding that he wasn’t going to go through chemotherapy and he wasn’t going to live. The fight happened, and it was basically presented to me as, if you don’t take this fight you may never get a chance to fight Ronda, that she may go into movies and this might be the only opportunity. I was really struggling with it, because I hadn’t been training. Things were really hard for me emotionally. I’m a huge daddy’s girl, so it was really hard for me.
“But when I accepted the fight, he was the first person I told about it. And he decided because of [the title fight], he was going to go through chemotherapy because he didn’t want to die before he got to see me fight.”
McMann said that the lymph nodes in his neck were swelling so bad that “he was literally on the brink of death” before he opted to do the chemo. He’d even gone so far as to divide all his things and got all his affairs in order. She said it was the reason she had to pull out of the fight with Sarah Kaufman
“We had hospice nurses coming to our house,” McMann said. “Every time that I drove up there I was very aware that that was the last time that I was probably going to see my dad. He cut it so unbelievably close to death that it’s ridiculous.
Her father’s slow decline was so hard to take that at one point McMann said she began taking antidepressants. But when matchmaker Sean Shelby presented her the Rousey fight, she knew that the training would break her from the gloom.
“I needed something,” she said. “I’ve trained my whole life. Training is a coping mechanism for me. I knew I needed to prepare for something. I needed to be in a practice room. Not practicing made it hard to deal with my dad.”
Though her father’s still suffering some of the aftereffects, McMann says he’s responded very well to the chemo and that his cancer is now in remission. And it all started with her getting that title shot.
McMann lost to Rousey that night in Las Vegas via TKO early in the first round, after taking a liver kick which double her over on the fence. It has been since debated as to whether or not it was an early stoppage by referee Herb Dean. Though she hopes a win over Tate will be enough to convince the UFC to give her a rematch, she took home some silver linings from that first encounter.
“Essentially no matter how that [Rousey] fight would have gone, I got more time with my dad,” the 2004 silver medalist Olympic wrestler said. “It was going to be a win for me either way.”
McMann rebounded with a victory over Lauren Murphy at UFC Fight Night 47 this past August in Bangor Maine, winning a unanimous decision. That had led her into this big spot against Tate, a fight that will head-up the preliminary action before the pay-per-view portion begins.
McMann had kept hush on her and her father’s story in the lead-up to the event last February. When asked months back by MMA Fighting about why she didn’t want the remarkable story to get out, McMann said that she didn’t want to take anything for granted, and that there was still a long way to go in the process. She wanted to keep the thing private until she knew things were headed in the right direction.
On Monday McMann said that enough time has elapsed where she feels she can talk about it all.
“I’m a lot more comfortable now because the situation is a lot further in the past,” she said. “Now I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it.”
Anthony Johnson’s work in Stockholm wasn’t so much a thing of beauty as it was of destruction. The interloper was cracking mountain faces with those punches he was throwing. Gustafsson, who had come in planning to work the delicacies of the striking game, was off his moorings from the first jab. All it took was an accidental eye-poke to signal the end. Right after that Johnson landed a right hand that sent Gustafsson’s title shot fleeting like a genie from the bottle, while 30,000 people at the Tele2 Arena jumped in unison to try and catch its tail.
Talk about a cold Sunday morning in Sweden.
And now it’s Johnson who will be facing Jon Jones. That fight will probably happen in July. The Great Resurrection Story versus the Greatest Going. Once again we are reminded that the fight game broadcasts from left field.
Who would have thought this was coming in the fall of 2011, back when Jones was defending his title against Quinton Jackson and Johnson was fighting the undersized Charlie Brenneman in a welterweight bout a week later? That version of “Rumble,” the incredibly shrinking one who was shedding years off his life in the sauna, wasn’t even considered a legitimate threat to Georges St-Pierre. Now it’s all different. The Johnson of 2015 is an immoveable hulk with enough power to make the chandeliers quake from impact reverberation.
You know what? That kind of power, together with Johnson’s renewal, makes for a damn fine title fight.
Of course, the easy comparisons between Johnson and Jones will fall to how they fared against Gustafsson. In Jones’ epic title defense against him in 2013, he needed five full rounds of plumbing his own depths to get his arm raised. Afterwards, he went to a Toronto hospital looking like a man who just experienced a stampede. Johnson needed just 125 seconds to dispose of Gustafsson. He came out in near mint condition.
Gustafsson’s showcase fight not only became Johnson’s, but Johnson made it feel a transatlantic statement.
Does it mean anything that he had an easier go against Gustafsson than Jones did? Maybe only to Vegas oddsmakers, who deal in perception. It is likely that Johnson will be less of an underdog against Jones than he was against Phil Davis at UFC 172, or than he was against Gustafsson at UFC on FOX 14. His performance against Gustafsson — in a set of circumstances stacked against him — jumped some stock. That’s a hell of a lot of momentum coming at Jones.
And really, we might want to soak this next one in.
It’s an old thought, one that gains and loses import with every passing day, but seriously…this could be the last compelling challenge for Jones as the UFC’s light heavyweight champion. With Johnson rerouting Gustafsson back to the old drawing board, there just isn’t much left in the way of challengers at 205 pounds. Davis, who for so long has been the “just wait” guy in the division, dropped an unimaginative decision to Ryan Bader in Stockholm. Bader isn’t going to get a rematch with Jones. Davis, whose career is playing out in pending, simply can’t get to him.
Consider, too, that Jones’ last two challenges came from other orbits — Cormier from heavyweight, and now Johnson who split time between welterweight, middleweight and the more unfortunate catchweight. That alone tells you the cupboards at 205 just aren’t exactly replenishing themselves. Jones has already defeated Rashad Evans, Gustafsson, Jackson, Glover Teixeira and Mauricio Rua, as well as Vitor Belfort and Cormier.
Unless the UFC wants to begin recycling narratives, Johnson might be the last man standing between Jones and his long-anticipated move to heavyweight — and not just because of Jones’ personal goals and preferences, but for the sake of reopening up the division. To get things moving along again. To once again add the dimension of hope, the thing that Jones began sapping from it the moment he took the belt from “Shogun” in March 2011. With Jones at the top, it’s become a land of gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers are devouring themselves.
This phenomena is what Dana White refers to as “cleaning out the division.” It’s a nearly impossible trick to pull off. But Jones really is at the cusp of doing just that.
The one person who can shake things up is, of all people, “Rumble” Johnson, who seems to have come back from his stint with the WSOF hell-bent on shaking things up. The Blackzilians fighter has been nothing short of dominant since losing to Belfort at UFC 142. He’s been actualized in his more natural frame. All that early plastic-suit stuff was a masquerade. As the Gustafsson fight proved, nobody’s walking over Anthony Johnson since he quit killing himself to fight.
And if Jones happens to do so, hey, it might be time for him to keep walking to the pool of new challenges at heavyweight. It’s Rumble’s Second Coming against Jones’ Possible Going.
Which, as mentioned earlier, makes for a damn fine title fight.
Anthony Johnson’s work in Stockholm wasn’t so much a thing of beauty as it was of destruction. The interloper was cracking mountain faces with those punches he was throwing. Gustafsson, who had come in planning to work the delicacies of the striking game, was off his moorings from the first jab. All it took was an accidental eye-poke to signal the end. Right after that Johnson landed a right hand that sent Gustafsson’s title shot fleeting like a genie from the bottle, while 30,000 people at the Tele2 Arena jumped in unison to try and catch its tail.
Talk about a cold Sunday morning in Sweden.
And now it’s Johnson who will be facing Jon Jones. That fight will probably happen in July. The Great Resurrection Story versus the Greatest Going. Once again we are reminded that the fight game broadcasts from left field.
Who would have thought this was coming in the fall of 2011, back when Jones was defending his title against Quinton Jackson and Johnson was fighting the undersized Charlie Brenneman in a welterweight bout a week later? That version of “Rumble,” the incredibly shrinking one who was shedding years off his life in the sauna, wasn’t even considered a legitimate threat to Georges St-Pierre. Now it’s all different. The Johnson of 2015 is an immoveable hulk with enough power to make the chandeliers quake from impact reverberation.
You know what? That kind of power, together with Johnson’s renewal, makes for a damn fine title fight.
Of course, the easy comparisons between Johnson and Jones will fall to how they fared against Gustafsson. In Jones’ epic title defense against him in 2013, he needed five full rounds of plumbing his own depths to get his arm raised. Afterwards, he went to a Toronto hospital looking like a man who just experienced a stampede. Johnson needed just 125 seconds to dispose of Gustafsson. He came out in near mint condition.
Gustafsson’s showcase fight not only became Johnson’s, but Johnson made it feel a transatlantic statement.
Does it mean anything that he had an easier go against Gustafsson than Jones did? Maybe only to Vegas oddsmakers, who deal in perception. It is likely that Johnson will be less of an underdog against Jones than he was against Phil Davis at UFC 172, or than he was against Gustafsson at UFC on FOX 14. His performance against Gustafsson — in a set of circumstances stacked against him — jumped some stock. That’s a hell of a lot of momentum coming at Jones.
And really, we might want to soak this next one in.
It’s an old thought, one that gains and loses import with every passing day, but seriously…this could be the last compelling challenge for Jones as the UFC’s light heavyweight champion. With Johnson rerouting Gustafsson back to the old drawing board, there just isn’t much left in the way of challengers at 205 pounds. Davis, who for so long has been the “just wait” guy in the division, dropped an unimaginative decision to Ryan Bader in Stockholm. Bader isn’t going to get a rematch with Jones. Davis, whose career is playing out in pending, simply can’t get to him.
Consider, too, that Jones’ last two challenges came from other orbits — Cormier from heavyweight, and now Johnson who split time between welterweight, middleweight and the more unfortunate catchweight. That alone tells you the cupboards at 205 just aren’t exactly replenishing themselves. Jones has already defeated Rashad Evans, Gustafsson, Jackson, Glover Teixeira and Mauricio Rua, as well as Vitor Belfort and Cormier.
Unless the UFC wants to begin recycling narratives, Johnson might be the last man standing between Jones and his long-anticipated move to heavyweight — and not just because of Jones’ personal goals and preferences, but for the sake of reopening up the division. To get things moving along again. To once again add the dimension of hope, the thing that Jones began sapping from it the moment he took the belt from “Shogun” in March 2011. With Jones at the top, it’s become a land of gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers are devouring themselves.
This phenomena is what Dana White refers to as “cleaning out the division.” It’s a nearly impossible trick to pull off. But Jones really is at the cusp of doing just that.
The one person who can shake things up is, of all people, “Rumble” Johnson, who seems to have come back from his stint with the WSOF hell-bent on shaking things up. The Blackzilians fighter has been nothing short of dominant since losing to Belfort at UFC 142. He’s been actualized in his more natural frame. All that early plastic-suit stuff was a masquerade. As the Gustafsson fight proved, nobody’s walking over Anthony Johnson since he quit killing himself to fight.
And if Jones happens to do so, hey, it might be time for him to keep walking to the pool of new challenges at heavyweight. It’s Rumble’s Second Coming against Jones’ Possible Going.
Which, as mentioned earlier, makes for a damn fine title fight.
