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Anderson Silva: What Will It Take to Dethrone the Reigning Pound-for-Pound King?

It seems clear at this point that no single strategy is sufficient to beat Anderson Silva. For a while there, we thought that high level wrestling might be enough to halt Silva’s record-breaking run. Then “The Spider” made it abundant…

It seems clear at this point that no single strategy is sufficient to beat Anderson Silva.

For a while there, we thought that high level wrestling might be enough to halt Silva’s record-breaking run. Then “The Spider” made it abundantly clear that wrestling alone is only effective if he happens to be recovering from double knee surgery or nursing a broken rib.

No, beating the 37-year-old Brazilian requires something a little extra special. It demands a potently eclectic mixture of skills, a high level combination of wrestling, jiu jitsu and striking—a durable chin would also come in handy for when things get a little hairy.

There are a few members of the UFC roster who have the skills to get the job done, and I doubt you will be surprised by who they are.

At the risk of hopping on the bandwagon, Chris Weidman has just the right skill-set to give Anderson a headache—both literally and figuratively.

However, I would simply be repeating myself if I elaborated on why the former All-American wrestler would pose problems for Silva. Read this article from earlier today if that particular matchup intrigues you.

The perennial pound-for-pound No. 2, Georges St-Pierre, has recently been discussed as a potential opponent for “The Spider” next year.

Though he wouldn’t be the favourite coming into the fight, the Canadian star has, at the risk of sounding like Liam Neeson, a particular set of skills that would make him a formidable opponent for the middleweight champion.

The problem for GSP is that he is considerably smaller than Anderson Silva.

However, this may not be as big an issue for him as it would be for some. The long-time welterweight king boasts the kind of athleticism that would allow him to overcome the size disparity.

Perhaps more importantly, GSP is arguably the most dominant wrestler in the sport—despite having no wrestling background. And as ever, this is the key piece of the puzzle.

If you can’t get the Brazilian to the floor, you might as well shake hands and depart the cage—even if GSP is a proficient striker in his own right.

Once on your back, the Montreal native possesses a smothering top game. Indeed, he has proven himself to be one of the sport’s best guard passers, slicing through the legendary guards of BJ Penn and Jon Fitch like a hot knife through butter.

If the pair do meet in the Summer of 2013, do not expect GSP to sit in Silva’s guard and play around with the Brazilian’s tricky bottom game. Rather, he is likely to utilise his passing skills to dodge that particular bullet.

It might not be pretty, but there’s no doubt that St-Pierre has the skill and athleticism to get the job done.

Perhaps the man with the best shot at dethroning the pound-for-pound king is Jon “Bones” Jones—the mention of his name here will come as no surprise to most of you. In fact, he may even enter the contest as favourite, given his size advantage.

Not only does the New Yorker have a terrific wrestling base, but he may be the one fighter on the roster who can compete with Silva’s striking.

While Jones may not be as technical as the Brazilian, his height and reach have thus far proven to be his biggest assets.

He might be able to keep “The Spider” at arm’s length while he searches for openings to initiate grappling exchanges—allow me to again stress that he might be able to.

Yet despite posing a whole host of physical issues for opponents on the feet, Jones would look to put Silva on his back and make use of his near-peerless ground-and-pound, mixing up punches with his razor-sharp elbows.

At this point, it will take a truly next generation mixed martial artist to stifle Silva’s talents. And the aforementioned athletes may be the only ones equipped to do it in the current mixed martial arts landscape.

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Silva vs Bonnar Results: What Is the Legacy of Stephan Bonnar?

I’m not a fan of Stephan Bonnar—nor are most people, if Twitter is anything to go by. According to our own Twitter rankings from last August, Bonnar is nowhere in the top 40 most-followed UFC fighters currently signed with the promotion. Wh…

I’m not a fan of Stephan Bonnar—nor are most people, if Twitter is anything to go by.

According to our own Twitter rankings from last August, Bonnar is nowhere in the top 40 most-followed UFC fighters currently signed with the promotion.

Which means that Bonnar’s insistence after his fight against Kyle Kingsbury last year that he’ll only come out of semi-retirement if the UFC lines up a fight against someone with more Twitter followers than him didn’t actually mean much. Any number of fighters could be chosen.

However, with the strange way that the universe works, and after campaigning hard for months to be given a big name opponent to end his career, Bonnar was given the man with more Twitter followers than any other in the world of MMA—Anderson Silva.

Bonnar’s Twitter obsession comes from an inconsistent career which has seen this little-more-than-average fighter finish with a 15-8 record after what could be his last fight on Saturday. As far as Bonnar sees it, the UFC has lined up too many unknown opponents who went on to become superstars following their victory over him, rather than the other way round.

He’s talking about Jon Jones.

Bonnar was Jones’ second opponent in the UFC and was a fighter the TUF alumni was meant to beat comfortably. But instead, Jones broke him apart over three rounds and has gone on to become the most dominant light heavyweight since Tito Ortiz.

Bonnar was left far in the distance, fading to further losses after that fight and becoming little more than a journeyman before Silva was offered to him.

However, when we’re talking about “legacy” and Bonnar, we are obliged to mention his performance on the first finale of TUF and his fight against Forrest Griffin, which Dana White once referred to as the most important fight in the promotion’s history.

It’s hardly that.

That fight went down in 2005, the UFC’s middle years, and its importance has long been superseded by endless turning points that have seen MMA become one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

Few MMA fans, who joined the sport post-Brock Lesnar—and that includes the vast majority of followers of the sport—will remember that fight.

Nor are they likely to remember many of his other fights. All his subsequent decision losses to Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin (again) or Mark Coleman are instantly forgettable. So too are his occasional wins against obsolete fighters such as Mike Nickels, Eric Schafer or Krzysztof Soszynski.

In the end, his two losses to two greats of the sport, Jones and Silva, will linger much longer in the memory.

Against Silva, he gave us an opportunity to see the Brazilian’s sublime brilliance in the cage against a completely inadequate opponent—and for that, we thank you, Bonnar.

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5 Prospects the UFC Must Sign Now

The UFC is home to the best fighters in the world and some of the best prospects in the world. However, outside of the UFC there are many intriguing prospects that could add great talent to the world’s largest promotion. They come from America, Eu…

The UFC is home to the best fighters in the world and some of the best prospects in the world.

However, outside of the UFC there are many intriguing prospects that could add great talent to the world’s largest promotion. They come from America, Europe and all over the world.

Here are five prospects the UFC should sign now to bolster the roster further.

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UFC 153 Results: The Trash Talking, Taunting Brilliance of Anderson Silva

The first time I really felt I understood Anderson Silva was almost four years ago at UFC 90. I was in Chicago to cover the UFC as it hit the Windy City for the first time. Silva, it seemed, was well on his way to being a star; a legitimate box office draw in the days the UFC needed a star badly, when Brock Lesnar was still an experiment and not an automatic million buys on pay-per-view.

Silva had absolutely annihilated everyone and every thing in his path, including the UFC’s middleweight poster boy Rich Franklin (twice) and Pride champion Dan Henderson. He had even taken a journey to light heavyweight where he made short work of James Irvin.

It was that night in Chicago where the wheels fell off Silva, at least as a box office attraction. Against Patrick Cote, a Canadian fighter who had won four consecutive fights in the UFC but who no one mistook for a legitimate challenger to a man like Silva, the middleweight was clearly bored. As a dance display, I gave it high marks:

He sashayed around the cage gracefully, but the fans were hoping for more fisticuffs and less lambada. Cote was the only one in attendance who was happy with Silva’s game plan—he was happy just to survive.

It was fairly clear from the start that Cote was no match for Silva. But rather than look to make an early night of it, Silva danced. It was almost like he felt disrespected at Cote’s mere presence across the cage from him. The titular challenger was a challenger in name only.

“What was he doing?” a reporter for one of the local dailies asked me after the fight. Dana White didn’t have an answer for that, telling us after the fight that, “I think I’m living in an alternate universe. That was Bizarro world…normally he annihilates people.”

But I thought I understood.

“He was having fun,” I told one of what was then a new breed of mainstream reporters following the sport. “Like a kid pulling legs off a helpless bug.”

If White found Silva’s display against Cote bizarre, he was in for a rude surprise. The champion was just getting started. He gesticulated and clowned throughout a title defense against Thales Leites, and did so little in his fight with Demian Maia in Abu Dhabi that White furiously stalked to the back before the fight was over.

Silva didn’t seem interested in fighting Maia at all, passively watching for much of the fight’s 25 minutes, occasionally exploding in furious bits of violence, screaming “Come on, hit me in the face, playboy.”

The uproar over the Maia fight seemed to dampen Silva’s instincts to tantalize and taunt his overmatched foes. He focused on business in his next few bouts, saving the shenanigans for before and after the fight.

He seemingly delighted in pretending that washed-up action star Steven Seagal was teaching him special techniques for his fights, and had a glint in his eye while inviting arch nemesis Chael Sonnen to a post-fight barbecue. Silva was still having fun, but in the cage he was as serious as anyone could ask him to be.

That mask slipped a little against Stephan Bonnar in Brazil. Bonnar, who had never beaten a top-10 opponent and was given the fight as kind of a gold watch, commemorating a career that helped kick off the UFC’s golden era, was in deep waters and treading hard from the very beginning.

Bonnar’s game plan was to push Silva into the cage, using his bulk to try to get the better of the champion in a war of attrition—trench tactics. Silva made that easy, pointedly planting his back into the cage and daring Bonnar to come forward. The champion fought his opponent using the absolute worst strategy, giving the underdog every possible chance at beating him.

In many ways that was worse than even the most cutting trash talk. Silva’s opinion of Bonnar as an athlete were made stark right there in the cage. He would give his opponent exactly what he wanted—and still destroy him.

When I see moments like that, I always smile. It’s what makes sports fun. Essentially, anything that would make Bob Costas deliver a long rant at halftime on Sunday Night Football, or that would make aging newspaper columnists decry a generation’s lack of civility and class, makes me enormously happy.

Anderson Silva, for all the time he spends in pre-fight workouts doing kata or bowing, complete with traditional gi, is the anti-martial artist. Silva’s instincts are to taunt, to trash talk, to show everyone how much better he is than his opponent. The tenets of respect, integrity and discipline? Not really a part of his game.

Anderson Silva is an amazing fighter, but he’s a lousy traditional martial artist. If you’re looking for elaborate displays of respect, even a hint of humility, or anything that resembles the traditional fighter’s code, you’ll find none of it here. Anderson Silva doesn’t respect his opponents. He wants to humiliate and embarrass them before separating them from their senses.

None of this makes Anderson Silva a bad person. He’s an entertainer and a cage fighter, not a choir boy or McDojo sensei. His job is to make fans happy and beat people up. He’s great at it. The best of all time. But as a role model, he fits squarely in the Charles Barkley camp; an athlete to marvel at and admire, but not one to emulate.

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Anderson Silva: Why a Potential Fight with Jon Jones Doesn’t Need to Happen

Anderson Silva extended his UFC record unbeaten streak to 16 consecutive victories when he defeated Stephan Bonnar on Saturday night. Silva stepped up to face Bonnar to save the UFC 153 fight card, taking the fight on short notice and fighting at light heavyweight in the process. Immediately following the fight and perhaps even before the fight, the question for Anderson Silva was: Well, what’s next?

There are three fights that fans are clamoring for Silva to take in the very near future. In Silva’s weight division, you have the fast-rising and undefeated Chris Weidman. Weidman, who extended his unbeaten record to 9-0 by knocking out Mark Munoz in July, has been campaigning for the fight against Silva, but those requests have been falling on deaf ears.

Silva addressed the Weidman issue during the UFC 153 post-fight press conference:

“Let me tell you this. I think all athletes in this division will get their opportunity of going for the title. I don’t have any intention of fighting with him. I think he still has a lot to do in the UFC. I’m in a comfortable position and I’m no longer a child, I’m 37 years old. He’s a kid, he’s starting and obviously this might happen, but I have two fights on my contract and I think one of them will be with (Georges) St-Pierre and I don’t really have an intention of fighting him because I’m not a fool, I’m already an oldie, you know?”

Which brings us to fight No. 2, UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. Ah, the proverbial superfight between two of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the history of the sport. As Silva indicated, he’s eager to face St-Pierre, but what about the welterweight champion? What’s his take?

St-Pierre recently spoke to MMAWeekly’s Damon Martin about a possible Silva fight, and he stepped around the question:

“I’m not focusing on that, I’m not speculating, I’m thinking about (Carlos) Condit right now, that’s what I should do.”

St-Pierre will face interim UFC welterweight champion Condit in the main event at UFC 154, which will take place on November 17 from the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

While the Silva vs. St-Pierre fight sounds great on paper, if St-Pierre defeats Condit and unifies the welterweight titles, the fight with Silva will almost be impossible to make. At this point, there are just too many talented fighters in that division looking for a shot at gold to deny them that opportunity.

To put together a fight between Silva and St-Pierre and deny those fighters a title-shot opportunity would be silly and short-sighted. The division is stacked with Martin Kampmann, Johny Hendricks, Nick Diaz, Demain Maia, a resurgent Jon Fitch and even perhaps Rory MacDonald.

However, if St-Pierre loses to Condit and is title-less on the night of November 17, the Silva fight becomes almost a no-brainer. That is unless the UFC and the fans still want to see St-Pierre face the man that briefly became his arch-enemy, the currently suspended Nick Diaz.

That brings us to fight No. 3, the one that would probably break records for UFC attendance, gate, pay-per-view and fighter purses—the superfight against UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones.

Neither fighter seems interested in this fight at all, but one person who is interested is UFC president Dana White, who said after the fight, “I know my man says ‘No, no, no.’ But the amount of money that would be offered for that fight, I guarantee you I will make Anderson Silva say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’”

Addressing the money issue, Silva said, “Since I started training martial arts, I never thought about the money. I think everything I was able to get was because I did it with pleasure and love. When I started, there was no money in this and I didn’t fight for money. Obviously, the money is important. We all need money, but I don’t fight for the money.”

The implication there is that no amount of money would sway Silva. That may be true, or it may be a ploy to raise his asking price. Only Silva knows that, but big picture perhaps the aging SIlva is looking at his legacy. To go down in UFC history as the greatest fighter to ever step into the Octagon would be a point of pride, and a fight against Jones would be a huge risk for Silva.

As a fan, the fights between St-Pierre and Jones are obviously the most interesting, but the reality is that they are mostly curiosities, there to satisfy our desire to see two of the best ever face off inside the Octagon. Would they sate our hunger or leave us wanting more?

Would I watch theses superfights? No doubt about it. But they don’t need to happen. In fact, I would say they shouldn’t happen, because sometimes it’s better to leave things out there in the realm of “what if.” It leaves us with endless debate, and it prevents us from being let down if our expectations about how these fights will look are left unrealized.

Silva versus Jones is our white whale—I say leave it that way.

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Anderson Silva vs. Stephan Bonnar: What This Fight Added to Silva’s Legacy

Stephan Bonnar may not have been the toughest opponent middleweight champion Anderson Silva has had to face, but his beguiling performance on Saturday night, finishing Bonnar with such contempt inside the first round, has just confirmed that Silva is t…

To Silva, his win in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, at UFC 153 on Saturday, was just one more on an incomparable 16-fight undefeated run. But to his admiring fans across the word, it provided clearer evidence that there has never been a fighter like him, and we may never see the likes of him again.

Of course the fight was not as important as his title-defence in July against Chael Sonnen. There was no title at stake. And even though the champion was fighting at 205 lbs, above his weight class for one night only, no one expected that Bonnar would provide any sort of challenge.

But that doesn’t matter when we have the privilege to witness what we saw on Saturday.

With little preparation for the fight, taking it at short notice to replace the injured Jose Aldo, Silva toyed with his opponent mercilessly. Like no other fighter ever could, Silva finished Bonnar with the same knee deftly and viciously aimed at the sternum—followed by a barrage of punches—which ended Sonnen’s knight.

It’s like Dana White said after the fight, “[Silva’s] like [Michael] Jordan—even the games he played that didn’t mean a lot—he still did a lot of great s**t.”

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