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UFC 168 is done, and with that, we find 11 fighters now coming off a loss.
Some lost big, some lost small, but all of them need something to do.
So what is next for Anderson Silva, Miesha Tate and the rest of the fighters who didn’t have a great …
UFC 168 is done, and with that, we find 11 fighters now coming off a loss.
Some lost big, some lost small, but all of them need something to do.
So what is next for Anderson Silva, Miesha Tate and the rest of the fighters who didn’t have a great time Saturday night? Who will they fight next? Will they fight again at all?
Find out right here!
Dear Anderson Silva,
The world saw you fight Chris Weidman on Saturday night at UFC 168, and it ended tragically.
MMA fandom has watched you for years now, beating champions like Rich Franklin and Forrest Griffin with almost inhuman ease. You to…
Dear Anderson Silva,
The world saw you fight Chris Weidman on Saturday night at UFC 168, and it ended tragically.
MMA fandom has watched you for years now, beating champions like Rich Franklin and Forrest Griffin with almost inhuman ease. You took the heroes of others and left them in broken heaps in a way that seemed impossible.
For most of us, you losing seemed unimaginable. You are better than the rest of us, and the way you showed that off was by beating up some of the toughest dudes around. When Chael Sonnen made you look human back at UFC 117, you fired back with spectacular knockouts of Yushin Okami and Vitor Belfort and made us remember why we were so enamored with you.
When Chris Weidman knocked you out, it broke through the superhuman facade a bit, but to many, you were still like the tides or the wind. Once again, we expected you to storm back with a vengeance.
As the fight approached, though, it seemed like you didn’t want to be there. The tides and the wind? They don’t choose to be a force of nature.
Your reluctance? That was the true sign that you are as human as any of us.
That is also what made your injury during the fight so sad.
A shattered leg is awful, but for it to occur in a contest that you didn’t really want? That’s heartbreaking.
So, unless you decide with every fiber of your being that you want to return to the cage, I hope you stay clear.
You have climbed the highest mountains, and have earned the right to chase whatever star you want. If, right now, you want to chase that fight with Roy Jones Jr. or make a run for a spot in the Rio Games, go for it. You’ve earned the right to chase whatever dream you want.
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(Photo via Getty)
The new guard’s success in the Octagon might not translate to success in the box office, much to the detriment of the UFC’s future.
There’s no doubt that in terms of skill, the new generation of fighters is superior. Chris Weidman beat Anderson Silva twice without ever being in danger. Jon Jones is ten times the fighter any previous light heavyweight champ ever was. The recently arrived era of fighters are to the previous era what the previous era was to old time greats like Mark Coleman. There’s a skill disparity; MMA has evolved.
However, just because the new breed has more aptitude, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll have more drawing power. The old guard, through their battles on the early TUF seasons, Spike TV and various PPVs, brought the UFC from fringe-level oddity status (think FX Toughman or Slamball) to global sports powerhouse—complete with a network TV deal and a burgeoning international audience. The UFC’s current crew simply can’t carry the company into growth like this in 2014 and onward.
It’s no secret that the UFC’s numbers haven’t been stellar lately. Despite having more exposure than ever before, 2013’s ceiling is looking a bit like 2008/9’s floor.
Will the new faces be able to reverse the UFC’s decline in popularity? If not, will they at least be able to help the UFC tread water until the storm is weathered?
The lighter, male, weight classes won’t, for starters. It’s widely-known that they don’t draw well. MMA’s casual fan—the guy who does bench presses in the squat rack and needs skulls on everything he owns—hears 125-pounds and immediately (wrongly) thinks “Fuck watching a fighter I can throw through the wall.”
It’s too early to tell whether the new generation of greats from lightweight, welterweight, or middleweight, or even the females will produce a “future of the company”/”franchise athlete”/choose your buzzword.
(Photo via Getty)
The new guard’s success in the Octagon might not translate to success in the box office, much to the detriment of the UFC’s future.
There’s no doubt that in terms of skill, the new generation of fighters is superior. Chris Weidman beat Anderson Silva twice without ever being in danger. Jon Jones is ten times the fighter any previous light heavyweight champ ever was. The recently arrived era of fighters are to the previous era what the previous era was to old time greats like Mark Coleman. There’s a skill disparity; MMA has evolved.
However, just because the new breed has more aptitude, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll have more drawing power. The old guard, through their battles on the early TUF seasons, Spike TV and various PPVs, brought the UFC from fringe-level oddity status (think FX Toughman or Slamball) to global sports powerhouse—complete with a network TV deal and a burgeoning international audience. The UFC’s current crew simply can’t carry the company into growth like this in 2014 and onward.
It’s no secret that the UFC’s numbers haven’t been stellar lately. Despite having more exposure than ever before, 2013′s ceiling is looking a bit like 2008/9′s floor.
Will the new faces be able to reverse the UFC’s decline in popularity? If not, will they at least be able to help the UFC tread water until the storm is weathered?
The lighter, male, weight classes won’t, for starters. It’s widely-known that they don’t draw well. MMA’s casual fan—the guy who does bench presses in the squat rack and needs skulls on everything he owns—hears 125-pounds and immediately (wrongly) thinks “Fuck watching a fighter I can throw through the wall.”
It’s too early to tell whether the new generation of greats from lightweight, welterweight, or middleweight, or even the females will produce a “future of the company”/”franchise athlete”/choose your buzzword.
Ronda Rousey has had more exposure than any UFC fighter in recent memory, but she stamped herself with an expiration date. It’s possible that the women’s strawweight division can help matters due to starlets like CagePotato’s own Rose Namajunas and Felice Herrig. But we won’t know how much mainstream appeal women’s strawweight has until the division starts picking up steam in the UFC.
Only an estimated 270,000 (and all following PPV numbers are unofficial estimates via MMAPayout’s blue book) fans purchased Anthony Pettis‘ UFC 164 fight against Ben Henderson, a fighter that never moves the needle buyrate-wise, despite being promoted on FOX numerous times. To put this number into perspective, UFC 101— main-evented by BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian—received 850,000 buys. The next card Penn headlined, UFC 107, received 620,000. So far, there hasn’t been a draw at lightweight not named BJ Penn. Don’t write Pettis off yet though, since he has the demeanor and attitude of a champion, as well as an extremely fan-friendly fighting style.
Johny Hendricks vs. GSP garnered an estimated 630,000 buys—GSP’s lowest performing PPV since UFC 87 when he fought Jon Fitch. The jury is still out on what’ll happen with this division regarding star power and the various, equally viable contenders for the belt.
That brings us to middleweight. Weidman is now a legend-killer, the Guy Who Beat Silva.™ Weidman’s reputation and success against one of MMA’s greatest fighters might translate into massive PPV buys and superstar status. But it might not.
At light heavyweight, Jon Jones wasn’t the Mike Tyson-esque superstar we all hoped he’d be. Judging from the buys, fans only show tepid interest in Jones’ systematic, brutal dismantling of some of the world’s greatest fighters. On average, Jones draws approximately 500,000 buys per PPV. That’s respectable but the UFC can’t move forward on that. A rematch with Alexander Gustafsson likely would’ve drawn well, but the UFC nixed the idea. Instead, they opted to put Jones against Glover Teixeira and put Gustafsson in a fight agaisnt 14-0 prospect Jimi Manuwa.
Jones’ good but disappointing numbers are similar to those of Cain Velasquez, the UFC’s great Mexican hope. His fight against Brock Lesnar approached one million buys, but he was never able to capture that success against any other opponent. Case in point: The final fight in arguably the most important feud in heavyweight history—Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos—sold only 330,000 PPVs.
Despite burying the old guard in the dust, fans might not care about the Chris Weidmans and Anthony Pettis’s of the UFC once the novelty wears off. Fans don’t always adopt the victorious young lions as their new idols once the old ones have been vanquished. Fans follow their heroes, and when their heroes are made into men—human beings just as fallible and vulnerable to the vagaries of time and the human body as the rest of us—the fans stop caring. Shooting Jesse James doesn’t make you Jesse James.
Anderson Silva is arguably the greatest fighter in UFC history, but after the broken leg heard ’round the world ended his fight with Chris Weidman at UFC 168, his greatest career achievement hasn’t yet been written.
A return to the Octagon would …
Anderson Silva is arguably the greatest fighter in UFC history, but after the broken leg heard ’round the world ended his fight with Chris Weidman at UFC 168, his greatest career achievement hasn’t yet been written.
A return to the Octagon would be the cherry on top.
Anyone who saw Silva’s leg snap like a brittle old pretzel on the knee of Weidman will tell you it looked like a career-ending injury.
After the fight, UFC president Dana White was unable to speculate about Silva’s future.
“He could come back, obviously, or it could be the end,” White said, via Brett Okamoto of ESPN. “We’ll have to see. He’s going into surgery right this second.”
The surgery White spoke of isn’t one Silva will recover from quickly, as detailed by UFC.com:
Following Saturday evening’s UFC 168 main event, former champion Anderson Silva was taken to a local Las Vegas hospital where he underwent surgery to repair a broken left leg. The successful surgery, performed by Dr. Steven Sanders, the UFC’s orthopedic surgeon, inserted an intramedullary rod into Anderson’s left tibia. The broken fibula was stabilized and does not require a separate surgery. Anderson will remain in the hospital for a short while, but no additional surgery is scheduled at this time. Recovery time for such injuries may vary between three and six months.
Professional athletes recover from gruesome injuries on a regular basis, but there’s no guarantee Silva will ever get back to the same kind of form he’s known for.
Former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz doesn’t think The Spider will ever be the same, and it’s hard to argue with his assessment:
At his best, Silva was unbeatable in the UFC. He earned the Middleweight title back in Oct. of 2006 and held onto it for the better part of seven years, successfully defending it a record 10 times.
Athletes who compete at such a high level aren’t usually inclined to continue competing if they can’t live up to their own standards, and it’s hard to imagine Silva would return to the Octagon unless he was fully confident in his ability to do so.
Even before his injury, Silva appeared to be slipping a bit, as clearly illustrated by his first loss to Weidman. Furthermore, Bleacher Report’s Lead MMA Writer Chad Dundas believes the second fight was Weidman‘s before the shocking injury:
Through the first six minutes, the second fight had been all Weidman. The new champion hurt Silva with a short right hand from the clinch early in the first round. He came close to finishing the bout with a series of strikes on the ground before grinding out the rest of the stanza from inside Silva’s guard.
Age is likely a huge factor in Silva’s recent fall from the UFC mountaintop. No doubt, Silva is still capable of getting into phenomenal shape. However, at the age of 38, his body isn’t capable of recovering as quickly as it once did from punishment, nor is it as quick to respond to his mind.
Not only does the former champ need to overcome a devastating injury to make it back, but he must overcome his waning physical attributes.
By the time Silva’s leg has healed enough for him to begin training, he’ll be 39 years old. This is hardly the time of life most fighters have in mind for a comeback—especially champions who have already achieved everything possible, like Silva has.
If he does manage to overcome the injury and make it back into the Octagon, then his achievement should be counted as his greatest to date.
Follow me on Twitter @JesseReed78
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After the bizarre finale to UFC 168, the MMA community is still struggling to overcome the horrific end to the evening’s main event bout between middleweight champion Chris Weidman and former kingpin Anderson Silva.
Weidman lifted his leg, turned his k…
After the bizarre finale to UFC 168, the MMA community is still struggling to overcome the horrific end to the evening’s main event bout between middleweight champion Chris Weidman and former kingpin Anderson Silva.
Weidman lifted his leg, turned his knee and checked the kick heard around the world.
Georges St-Pierre voluntarily retired weeks ago, whereas Silva might be forced to do the same in light of his crippling leg fracture.
MMA’s new guard has much work ahead of it in 2014.
There is an upside, though. The rest of the evening was rather terrific.
Travis Browne continued his destructive run, as did Ronda Rousey. In fact, the entire main card was devoid of a single decision.
Let’s take a moment to examine whose stock went up, whose went down and what the consequences of this monumental fight card are likely to be.
Sometimes the UFC just gets it right.
They get it so right that it makes you forget about all the times that they don’t get it right.
They make you forget about ill-advised global expansion, watered down cards and the lack of stars they’ll have for mos…
Sometimes the UFC just gets it right.
They get it so right that it makes you forget about all the times that they don’t get it right.
They make you forget about ill-advised global expansion, watered down cards and the lack of stars they’ll have for most of 2014.
They make everything else irrelevant and one thing matter, slamming a home run with the force of Mark McGwire at the juiciest peaks of his prime.
In the wake of UFC 168, with a seemingly off-the-cuff announcement, Dana White did just that.
Standing at the dais flanked by a collection of fighters in various states of physical and emotional dismay, fielding questions about the broken leg of a former champion for most of the night, he casually told the world that Ronda Rousey would defend her title on February 22 against Sara McMann.
It did little to crack the deafening dread of a press corps weighted by a gruesome injury to the best of all-time, but in other circumstances, it would have caused quite a stir. In fact, by February, it could be a full-on media circus.
Why is that?
Because February 22, 2014 is the final Saturday night of the Sochi Olympics and both Rousey and McMann happen to be former Olympic medalists—Rousey a formidable judoka with a bronze in 2008, McMann a slightly more decorated wrestler with a silver from 2004.
All of a sudden, the UFC has created an event that can’t be missed, and it pretty much sells itself. On a weekend when the successes of the world’s greatest amateur athletes will be celebrated in Russia, Las Vegas will be rocking with two undefeated women fighting for the 135-pound title, both of who came from those ranks.
It’s a brilliant piece of piggybacking by the promotion, one buoyed a little further by the appearance of former Olympian Daniel Cormier in the co-main event. It leads one to think that the hopelessness of a UFC without Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Cain Velasquez and Anthony Pettis might not be so dire after all.
Taking one of the two remaining superstars the promotion has in Rousey (the other being Jon Jones), rebooking her at the peak of fan interest on the night she beat her greatest rival for a second time and exploiting her greatest non-MMA accomplishment to do it is a stroke of pure genius. To book her against another Olympian is beyond genius, entering some stratosphere of brilliance that may be beyond words.
Not since UFC 146, a night devoted to an all-heavyweight main card has the promotion so effectively used circumstance to market their brand so expertly. There’s more to this game than two people punching each other in the face, and while that’s enough for many, it’s not enough for all.
Sometimes it’s that hook, be it a rivalry, a story or a clever piece of salesmanship, that draws more eyes on a Saturday night. It’s why Brock Lesnar routinely drew a million buys, guys people know from The Ultimate Fighter get more rope than guys people don’t and events like UFC 146 are lauded for their creativity and accessibility.
With UFC 170, the promotion has their hook. They picked a perfect night to put their top Olympic draws on a marquee and watch the coffers fill with cash.
Yup. Sometimes they just get it right, and nothing else matters.
And is that ever fun to see when it happens.
Follow me on Twitter @matthewjryder!
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