Like a lot of the writers that cover this sport, I haven’t been an MMA fan since UFC 1.
Hell, I was only two years old when Royce Gracie shocked the world and dominated the first UFC tournament, and to be honest I didn’t even know what the UFC was until the premiere episode of The Ultimate Fighter aired one night after I’d gotten my fix of WWE Raw on SpikeTV in 2005.
From that moment forward, I was hooked.
Like most fans that came from watching The Ultimate Fighter, I was incredibly biased whenever my boys from TUF 1 stepped inside the cage, and when original cast member/crazy person Chris Leben stepped inside the Octagon at Ultimate Fight Night 5 against a guy I’d barely heard of in Anderson Silva, I expected an early knockout for “The Crippler.”
Instead, I had my mind blown by the most impressive performance I’d ever seen inside a cage.
It seemed as though Silva couldn’t miss, as he kept on tagging Leben with what seemed like an endless barrage of strikes that all seemed to land right on the button.
Silva ended up landing 17 of his 20 significant strikes thrown. If you had asked me right after the fight, I would have guessed he hit at least 50.
From that moment on, I’ve considered Anderson Silva the most dominant fighter in the world.
For all of us that started watching the sport through TUF, Silva was the first guy that both new and old UFC fans saw blossom into a star with their own eyes.
Guys like Hughes, Liddell and Couture had been around forever and long-time fans had been waiting for them to blow up for a long time.
Silva came out of nowhere and took over the sport right at its most dangerous transition period.
Within a year of Silva’s winning, Hughes and Liddell both lost their titles, and Couture had left the UFC. Suddenly all of the stars the organization had built up through it’s reality show had either walked away or lost their titles, and it forced the UFC to market Silva as must-see TV.
I’ve sat back in awe as Silva has destroyed guys I’d come to know and respect like Rich Franklin, Nate Marquardt and even PRIDE champion Dan Henderson, and even after The Spider’s string of lackluster title defenses against Cote, Leites, and Maia, I never picked against him.
Anderson Silva was the scariest fighter in the world, and I had no reason to believe that anyone was ever going to beat him with anything other than a lucky punch.
That changed at UFC 117, and the fall of Silva will become a reality tonight.
It’s been an incredible six years since Silva came out and forced my brain to explode with his beatdown of Leben, but for the first time since that night, I think Anderson Silva is going to lose.
Chael Sonnen not only has the style to defeat Silva, but he also has the swagger. Many of Silva’s opponents walk into the cage looking as though they’re waiting to get knocked unconscious, and even more start to doubt themselves once Silva gets in front of them and starts easily dodging every strike they throw at him.
The aura that surrounds Silva is a dangerous thing in itself, and Sonnen is truly the only fighter I’ve seen in the last six years that was able to walk right through that mystique and give The Spider everything he could handle.
There’s no point in recapping the first fight, especially just a few hours away from the rematch, but if there’s one thing I got from the UFC 117 bout that matters, it’s that Sonnen had Silva beat.
The testosterone doesn’t matter, the injured ribs don’t matter, and even the triangle choke that put Sonnen away doesn’t matter at this point.
Chael Sonnen knows exactly what he needs to do in order to defeat Anderson Silva.
He’s known it for two years now, and when Sonnen walks out of the cage with the UFC middleweight belt around his waist tonight, my whole view of mixed martial arts is going to be changed forever.
I wasn’t around when Gracie was tapping out everyone in the world. I barely knew what was going on for most of Chuck Liddell’s reign as champ, and Matt Hughes was nothing but the next step in Georges St-Pierre’s career by the time I started watching this sport.
Anderson Silva was the first fighter that I truly believed was unbeatable, and a small part of me is going to hate it when he finally falls.
Tonight will be the end of Silva’s reign as king, and we can just hope the era of Sonnen is as entertaining as those of his predecessors.
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