Stepping back into the Octagon after more than a year off, Anderson Silva is back and with his return comes predictions of shocking devastation and artistic annihilation.
A while back, I listed Anderson Silva vs. Nick Diaz as a “Superfight” and predicted an outcome of a Silva win, via stoppage. Like nearly everyone with a set of functioning eyes and a long history of following the combative sports, I used adages like “styles make fights,” and so on.
Truth be told, I wasn’t wrong in that notion; styles do make fights, and as they always have, so they always will.
But I was also writing from the perspective of a dreamer, and when that happens, things get overlooked.
From a pure stylistic standpoint, Silva should utterly demolish Diaz. I don’t need to recount all the reasons why because it’s already been done in a thousand articles.
Most—not all—of those reasons fans have read about are correct. But none of them seem to be attending history with any sense of realism, and that includes my previous take on the subject.
Simply put, while styles make fights, youth alone makes for the styles of such fighters like The Spider; only in the world of the young does physical talent flourish, untaxed by time.
Men like Silva are indeed artists. At a certain point, they realize that their skills are augmented by physical abilities that don’t come along that often—at least not when coupled with a mind that recognizes the opportunities that arise when talent meets desire.
As hard as it is for many fight fans to believe, Silva is not the first of his kind, not by a long shot.
That is why I am coming to the conclusion that a Silva defeat, at the hands of an unlikely spoiler like Diaz, is not as implausible as most would believe.
Even though Silva possesses important advantages in the realms of size, experience, power, speed and skill, he is giving up the high ground in three terribly significant areas: youth, endurance and any kind of foundation found only in a strict adherence to the basics of the sport.
When a fighter gets old (as all must), the more their foundation is tested. If it is built on the basics of the fight game—the sound mechanics of offense and defense—then they can adapt, plying their experience and savvy via strategy and gamesmanship, in the hopes that they can anticipate and counter the advantages of their younger opposition.
In short, they begin to use their mind rather than their body, anticipating before the fact, rather than relying on reflexes to defend them after the fact.
This very thing is what allowed men such as Randy Couture and Bernard Hopkins to compete and succeed in the face of much younger and more physically “fluid” opposition.
It is also an aspect of note when it comes up missing, as it usually does in the persons of great talent, who cannot and will not be encumbered by working behind the basics of a sound jab, or defensive practices that limit their freedom of expression.
We saw this in full when Silva got his clock cleaned by Chris Weidman at UFC 162. No matter what anyone says, this was not a fluke. Silva was doing what he always did, but this time he wasn’t able to do it as well as he had done before.
In Weidman, he faced an opponent who was rising to the occasion, second-by-second. In Weidman, he was also facing a young lion that was swinging a very basic yet heavy hammer.
A younger Silva, unencumbered with the expression-hindering limitations of basic defense, probably would have been saved by his reflexes and his stamina. That version of Silva was nowhere to be found in the cage against Weidman (at either time) and in truth, probably no longer exists.
That’s the sad and ironic thing about witnessing an artist at work. After time, the colors of their palate seem to bore them and thus they begin to try and transcend yet again, only to find that the brush is trembling because their hand is shaking.
Sometimes, seemingly overnight, they can’t even hold the brush at all.
When someone—anyone—tries to encourage them with calls to attend the basic, they cannot heed that wisdom because that which is basic is utterly alien to them from a practical standpoint.
They understand the concepts because as artists, no basic concept escapes them. But when it comes to applying the basic with any kind of success or satisfaction, they cannot do the former because it will not lead them to the latter.
If they can’t fly, they’d rather die.
While diehard fans of Silva will try and dismiss his previous losses as nothing more than a momentary flight of hubris or fluke endings, facts are facts. Silva is showing many of the signs of a fighter—an artist—in decline.
Of course, you have to look at history in order to see evidence of such signs in order to know what they look like now, and for Silva fans, it should be easy.
All they need do is heed the downfall of one of Silva’s heroes: Roy Jones Jr.
Once upon a time, Jones, like Silva, was utterly untouchable and unbeatable. Against the exceptional fighters of his era, in his prime, Jones made them look like club-level fighters by comparison.
He beat Bernard Hopkins by decision, basically using one hand. He swarmed James Toney with an offensive blitz that was so fast and unpredictable that the latter—who is one of the greater defensive minds when it comes to boxing—was unable to cope, aside from covering his head and praying for rain.
Jones was so great that he even scaled the heavyweight mountain, beating the odds and Jon Ruiz, to claim a portion of the heavyweight crown. Considering where Jones had started, it is still a staggering accomplishment and one not bound to be repeated for another 100 years.
After besting Ruiz, Jones honestly should have retired. He had put his body through hell over the years, especially during his heavyweight ascent, and he had nothing else to prove.
Then, his pride was attacked by Antonio Tarver, who hounded Jones publicly. Jones took up the challenge, began cutting back down from heavyweight to light heavyweight and met Tarver in the ring.
The result was a victory for Jones that saw him win a decision that was much closer than many cared to admit. He looked slow and sluggish, getting hit more often than ever, lingering too long in positions that he used to own based on his freakish physical gifts.
Those areas of advantage that used to belong to him alone suddenly seemed like a foreign language to him, and the combative sports are not kind to visitors with a limited visa.
A rematch was announced and Jones this time saw it all come to a crashing end in Round 2, thanks to getting caught with one of the more basic blows in boxing: the counter left hook. He was caught and knocked out cold by a blow that couldn’t have found a younger Jones if it were a thousand in number and coming down like rain.
Jones tried to come back, but after being an artist for so long, defying the basic rules of the sport and flying high above the rest, he didn’t know how to walk like mortal men—re: his opponents—and thus with the gifts of youth gone, he was beaten down with the book of basics.
As was the case for Jones, so too might the case be for Silva.
Like Jones, Silva looked terribly bored with fighting when he stepped into the ring against Weidman for the first time. All the in-cage antics didn’t seem like a kind of gamesmanship aimed at Weidman; it seemed like Silva trying to find something in the ring to make it all worthwhile.
As if a dangerous opponent wasn’t enough.
Then, in his strongest area of advantage, Silva was taken out with a basic blow that was not preceded by any kind of complex set up. He didn’t get caught with that shot because he wasn’t a great fighter; he got caught because he grew old and all those years of flying high have seen those mortal legs wither and entropy with neglect.
The basics are the tools that fighters can carry with them into the later years of their career. They are great because they are simple and they are also equally dangerous for anyone with the patience and dedication to master them. They serve young and old alike, but it is the latter that make the most of them if an older fighter’s discipline can match his desire.
Quite honestly, I don’t know if Silva has it in him to do anything other than jump off the highest cliff, fully believing he can fly as he always has. I don’t think we’re going to see a wiser, cunning version of Silva that uses the basics to any kind of true advantage.
I also don’t think we’re going to see that version of Silva that possessed such incredible timing, or such accuracy, for one is surely dependant on the other.
He may not look like the old man he is becoming on January 31, 2015, but if he does, it would not surprise me in the least. No matter how great a fighter he is, he is not the fighter he once was, and the signs are there.
Diaz is the younger man, in his prime, and he doesn’t have one ounce of pressure on his shoulders. He also has the endurance needed to push or survive a heavy pace. Above all, he just doesn’t care about any of the supposed advantages Silva used to possess.
Diaz knows that ownership of any realm in the world of combative sport is contestable; come fight night, the odds that he gives away anything to Silva are slim. That “don’t be scared, homie,” attitude and a willingness to fly face-first in defiance of anything and everything will probably see another previous advantage of Silva nullified: the psychological edge.
Unless Silva scores a very quick stoppage, Diaz will be in his face all night long, and every second that passes will see him become bolder. While Diaz may not be any great philosopher, he knows how to solve the puzzles of distance and timing, and it’s not as complex as most would believe; initiating action to gauge reactions will do the trick more often than not.
Going into UFC 183, Diaz could be seen as the agent of the basic; simple youth driven by simple desire, empowered by simple tools used with furious purpose. As much as we would like to say fighting is a metaphor for so much more, it really is, and always has been, simple and direct. That is a language men like Diaz (and others of his stylistic slant, such as Julio Cesar Chavez) can speak all day long.
For Silva, if he is to once again make that which is simple look utterly innocent, like a sacrificial lamb offered up in his name for slaughter, he has to turn back the clock. He must be what he once was—at least for no less than 25 minutes—when he was in love with fighting, before getting knocked out by Weidman one time and shattering his shin the next.
The list of problems he could face if he does not is worrisome.
If Silva’s timing is off, he’s going to get hit a lot more than expected, and that could throw his whole game off.
If Silva’s judgment of distance is off, he’s going to get hit a lot more than expected, and that could throw his whole game off.
If Silva is slower than he used to be, or any number of things, the results could be disastrous. There was no single skill that Silva had that made him the greatest ever; it was all of his skills, empowered by his physical gifts, which made him the best.
If those physical gifts have faded, then the tools they empower fall short and with them go their master.
Diaz isn’t the best fighter in the world, and even if he beats Silva, he won’t be remembered as the better fighter. Ironically enough, within Diaz we see clear reminders of the constants of combative sport: indomitable spirit, utter defiance, aggression and desire. They’re constants that Silva cannot overcome forever.
It is these aspects that could see Diaz revealed as the worst stylistic matchup for Silva, rather than vice versa, because he brings the most basic to bear with more malice and bad intent than possibly anyone else in the sport.
It’s a tragic thing in a way—being able to fly so high above the rest of the world. All it takes is one problem—one sign of age, one missed moment or misjudged distance—and suddenly flying through the sky is replaced with falling to the earth.
Perhaps the fall will occur at UFC 183, perhaps not, but if it does, no one should be surprised. Fighters grow old; it happens all the time.
Even to the greats.
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