UFC light heavyweight contender Phil Davis perplexed the majority of the fight community when he called out former longtime 185-pound champ Anderson Silva, but he maintains that the matchup makes sense.
After a decisive, albeit largely uneventful…
UFC light heavyweight contender Phil Davis perplexed the majority of the fight community when he called out former longtime 185-pound champ Anderson Silva, but he maintains that the matchup makes sense.
After a decisive, albeit largely uneventful, unanimous-decision win Saturday over former UFC title challenger Glover Teixeira at UFC 179 , Mr. Wonderful said he’d love a fight with Silva and explained why at the post-fight press conference (h/t Mixedmartialarts.com).
He’s an awesome fighter, probably one of the best to ever compete in the UFC, so why not? All the questions during the media day were centered around being ‘The Brazilian Killer.’ I don’t know if I’d call myself a killer, but at the same time, that would complete my trifecta of Brazilian fighters.
While Teixeira also hails from Brazil, Davis refers to his previous victories over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and former UFC light heavyweight titleholder LyotoMachida due to their connection to Black House and Silva.
After Little Nog initially showcased stout takedown defense at their UFC Fight Night 24 encounter in March 2011, Davis quickly adapted on the fly and found a way to get the fight to the ground.
The former four-time NCAA Division I All-American also managed to shut down the submission game of Nogueira, a well-known Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.
His victory over The Dragon at UFC 163 in August of last year was far less convincing, as he clearly lost the striking battle and did little damage when the fight hit the mat.
Nevertheless, Davis’ takedowns and submission attempts were sufficient to convince the three judges he did enough to get his hand raised.
With all that being said, his callout of Silva remains puzzling being that the all-time great is a career middleweight who has fought at 205 pounds just three times in 39 professional fights.
On top of that, The Spider is already booked for a slugfest with former Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz at UFC 183 on January 31.
Diaz has only fought above 170 pounds twice in his 36-fight career, both of which were catchweightmatchups, and has never competed at middleweight before.
Also bear in mind that Davis has never fought at a weight class other than light heavyweight, and due to his lean, muscular physique, dropping down to 185 pounds doesn’t seem like a realistic possibility.
In the event that Silva defeats Diaz, would there be any set of circumstances to make a bout with Davis make sense?
John Heinis is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA editor for eDraft.com.
It was a lot closer than his first meeting with Chad Mendes, but Jose Aldo once against defended his belt from the Team Alpha Male standout.
Although Mendes attempted eight takedowns, he didn’t seem overly hesitant to stand with the champion. While tha…
It was a lot closer than his first meeting with Chad Mendes, but Jose Aldo once against defended his belt from the Team Alpha Male standout.
Although Mendes attempted eight takedowns, he didn’t seem overly hesitant to stand with the champion. While that didn’t work out so well, he did seemingly rock Aldo on multiple occasions.
Still, Mendes was also hurt by multiple strikes thrown by the titleholder, including an unfortunate blow after the horn had sounded to signal the end of the opening round. Aldo was never warned for the illegal blow, and Mendes may not have been the same over the four rounds that followed.
His win may be tainted, but Aldo did continue his reign as featherweight champion. The Brazilian is now tied with Jon Jones for the most consecutive title defenses among current UFC champions, and that doesn’t include his time as WEC champion.
When Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes first stepped into the Octagon two years ago, the high-profile bout was over before it could begin. An Aldo knee to Mendes’ skull knocked the challenger out and allowed the champion to retain his title, though the quick e…
When Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes first stepped into the Octagon two years ago, the high-profile bout was over before it could begin. An Aldo knee to Mendes‘ skull knocked the challenger out and allowed the champion to retain his title, though the quick ending proved something of an anticlimactic finish to the anticipated fight.
When Aldo and Mendes agreed to get into the ring once more, again it seemed only disappointment would follow. An Aldo neck injury forced the promotion to wipe out UFC 176 altogether, as the promotion was unable to find a suitable opponent for Mendes in time to justify holding the event. Rescheduled for Saturday’s UFC 179, Aldo and Mendes knew they’d have to turn in the fight of their lives to justify the surrounding hype.
They did just that. And then some. Aldo managed to retain the featherweight championship with all three scorecards reading 49-46 in the champion’s favor. In a five-round fight, that might look like a blowout. But the scorecards in this case do not tell the whole story, as Aldo and Mendes turned in one of the best fights of 2014.
Both fighters had opportunities to seal the deal. Aldo and Mendes traded first-round knockdowns, Mendes dominated the fourth round and Aldo had his opponent on the proverbial ropes at numerous points. When it looked like one fighter was about to take over, though, the other would come battling back—as if each were writing the script to their own sports movie.
The only stoppages in the action came when Mendes twice poked Aldo in the eye, first in the opening round and then again in the third. No points were deducted from either fighter’s total, though the decision to not shave a point from Aldo following a late first-round punch was controversial. It’s impossible to tell how a points deduction would have altered the fight—the result here is immaterial because of how fights can ebb and flow—but UFC president Dana White and Aldo both claim there was no intent to injure.
“After that first round, a couple people came over and started saying, ‘He hit him with two punches after the bell. That was late,’” White told John Morgan of MMA Junkie. “I didn’t hear anything. It was so loud in that arena, I didn’t hear it. It didn’t look like the referee heard it.”
In the end, the judges got their cards right. Aldo, despite some of the best tactical fighting of Mendes‘ career, never lost control of the fight. The champion was an expert at halting the momentum of his challenger, only ceding during a fourth round that he seemingly punted away. Having secured the first three rounds by most objective observations, it’s possible that Aldo gave Mendes the fourth round to conserve energy.
“I think every fight is the toughest fight of my career,” Aldo said, perBrett Okamoto of ESPN.com. “I think I deserved to win. He hit me a few times but I him a lot more. But congratulations to Chad Mendes. I have respect for him, his whole team, his family. Inside [the cage] it is a rivalry, but outside we’re friends.”
The win was Aldo’s seventh title defense and his 18th straight victory overall. The 28-year-old Brazilian has become a master of doing exactly what’s needed to dominate a fight. Aggressive, TKO-heavy bouts of his early career have slowly ceded to more and more decision wins. Five of his seven title defenses have gone to the judges’ scorecards, with not a single one having him on the losing end.
In some ways, Aldo is emerging as a generational answer to Floyd Mayweather. Like Mayweather, Aldo thrives when he’s taking away what an opponent does best. Aldo, like Mayweather, is a very good offensive fighter but a great defensive tactician. Comparing anyone to Mayweather is unfair—especially given his single-handed propping up of his sport—but Aldo is well on his way to carving a sterling long-term legacy.
Saturday night, Aldo showed what he could do when challenged. It’s a side we’ve rarely seen since he moved up from the WEC in 2010. It’s also a side that seemed to bring out the best from one of the world’s mixed martial artists. It’s a side we expected in their first fight, waited for despite the postponement of their second and finally got in Rio deJaneiro.
Saturday night’s UFC 179 pay-per-view featured a great main event between Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes, but the entire fight card was filled with entertaining bouts.
With Phil Davis earning a lopsided decision win over Glover Teixeira and Fabio Mald…
Saturday night’s UFC 179 pay-per-view featured a great main event between Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes, but the entire fight card was filled with entertaining bouts.
With Phil Davis earning a lopsided decision win over Glover Teixeira and Fabio Maldonado knocking out Hans Stringer on top of the marquee featherweight title fight, this was one of the most entertaining shows of the last several months.
Here are the full fight card results and a breakdown of the most underrated bout at UFC 179.
Breaking Down the Most Underrated Fight of the Night
While Aldo vs. Mendes stole most of the headlines, the battle between Phil Davis and Glover Teixeira was a great sign for the future of the light heavyweight division.
Teixeira was coming off a loss to Jon Jones in a championship bout, and he was thoroughly outclassed by Davis on Saturday. As well as Teixeira performed during his winning streak leading into his title match, Davis was the more effective striker and the better wrestler on Saturday night.
Davis was coming off a decision loss to Anthony Johnson and realized how important a victory was to his career. As one of the best wrestlers in the sport, Davis has been a light heavyweight championship contender, but he has lost in some of the biggest moments.
While Saturday’s fight went to the judges’ scorecards, it was very clear that Davis was the winner.
After beating Teixeira, Davis called out a legend in his post-fight interview, via Marc Raimondi of Fox Sports, saying, “Lately they’ve been calling me the Brazilian killer, but I really don’t like that…I have beat a lot of Brazilians and there’s one Brazilian guy I’d like to face and that’s Anderson Silva.”
Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter commented on Davis’ performance:
Teixeira will have to go to the back of the championship-contention line after back-to-back losses, but Davis’ future looks bright once again. One possible fight that could come out of this fight would be Davis vs. Rashad Evans in a rematch from 2012.
Evans defeated Davis via unanimous decision, but the second bout between the men would be a marquee bout that could co-headline a PPV. The light heavyweight division is crowded at the top with Jones, Daniel Cormier and Alexander Gustafsson, and the battle between Evans and Davis would be a great test of which fighter deserves an eventual title shot.
Regardless of who is next, Davis proved once again he can compete with the best fighters in the sport. While a matchup against Anderson Silva looks like a pipe dream right now, there is always a chance Dana White and UFC officials schedule Davis vs. Silva in the future if the American keeps winning.
It continues to feel like two steps forward, one step back for Phil Davis.
Davis got off the schneid Saturday night at UFC 179, putting on a wrestling clinic en route to a unanimous-decision victory over Glover Teixeira. It was a good win, rekindl…
It continues to feel like two steps forward, one step back for Phil Davis.
Davis got off the schneid Saturday night at UFC 179, putting on a wrestling clinic en route to a unanimous-decision victory over Glover Teixeira. It was a good win, rekindling at least some of the momentum he once enjoyed as a fast-rising prospect in the light heavyweight division.
But on a night when yet another of the fight company’s pay-per-view cards slumped all the way to its stellar main event, Davis’ performance did little to lift our spirits. Even as the judges in Rio deJaneiro announced a clean sweep for the American (30-27 on all three scorecards), it felt as though he hadn’t told us anything about himself we didn’t already know.
Davis can wrestle. When he’s able to implement the grappling skills that made him an NCCA Division I national champion at Penn State, he typically wins his fights.
He did that and more against Teixeira, taking the recent No. 1 contender down at will throughout their 15 minutes together. Davis rode Teixeira like an underclassman on his first day of varsity practice, hanging on his back while peppering him with punches and dragging him back to the mat each time he endeavored to work his way back to his feet.
The end result made Teixeira look slow, borderline helpless. It also accomplished the most important goal of Davis’ night: to get a win and remain relevant after a disastrous loss to Anthony Johnson in April at UFC 172.
Yet if there has been a single, unifying critique of Davis’ near five-year run in the Octagon, it’s that at 30 years old and a dozen fights deep, he still looks fairly one-dimensional. Turning in a three-round drubbing of Teixeira was impressive in its way but didn’t do much to convince us that Davis has closed the holes in his stand-up game.
Afterward, he got on the mic and offered up one of the most out-of-the-blue call-outs in UFC history.
“Lately they’ve been calling me the Brazilian killer, but I don’t really like that,” he told UFC color commentator Brian Stann. “I’m a Christian man, I’m humble, I don’t just go around calling myself a killer, OK? But I have beat a lot of Brazilians and there’s only one guy out there who is Brazilian who I would love to fight and that’s Anderson Silva.”
Just like the victory itself, maybe this seemed like a great idea on paper.
Here was Davis trying to take advantage of a high-profile opportunity to talk his way into a big-money fight. Silva, who is notoriously sensitive to disrespect, was at ringside and had publicly inserted himself into the action by climbing atop the cage to congratulate Fabio Maldonado on a victory in a previous fight.
In practice, though? Not so much.
Davis calling out Silva was a total non sequitur, tone deaf in its complete diversion from reality. It only added a sour note to a night when things already seemed a little out of tune.
Davis hadn’t exactly turned in a virtuoso performance, after all, and therefore hadn’t earned the political capital to call out the greatest MMA fighter of all time. This is to say nothing of the fact that Silva is a middleweight—though he’s made sporadic appearances at 205 pounds—is returning from a potentially career-ending leg injury and is already booked for a fight against Nick Diaz (a welterweight) in January.
The partisan Brazilian crowd was not amused at the suggestion, though maybe they were still just trying to catch up. Davis’ challenge to Silva came almost immediately after he used a tired Wesley Snipes reference as a non-answer to Stann’s first question. The whole thing felt rehearsed, though apparently not rehearsed enough for Davis to realize it was a bad idea.
At the post-fight press conference, he tried to clarify his position, with limited success.
“(Silva is) one of the absolute best Brazilian fighters, and one of the absolute best fighters there is,” Davis said, via MMAjunkie’s Steven Marrocco and John Morgan. “Why not? He’s an amazing fighter.”
Perhaps it’s easy to feel Davis’ pain here. The in-cage antics felt like an obvious but misguided attempt to answer recent criticisms from UFC President Dana White. Leading up to the Johnson fight, the UFC boss questioned Davis’ desire to be the best, perhaps as an attempt to ignite a fire in him after a lackluster win over LyotoMachida at UFC 163.
“Phil needs to get over that mental hump …,” White had said, via Marrocco. “He’s one of the best light heavyweights in the world…(but) he’s not that guy that comes across to me like, ‘I f—–g want it. I want to be the champ.’”
Still, if Davis wanted to show White (and the world) that he’s still a serious 205-pound contender, why call out Silva? Why not point out that with Johnson out on indefinite suspension, the light heavyweight division needs somebody to take his place?
Why not suggest a rematch with Alexander Gustafsson, who Davis beat during each man’s UFC infancy but who has since leapfrogged him in the rankings? Why not call out Rashad Evans, who defeated Davis in January 2012 and is also now about to return from injury?
Evans and Gustafsson have been linked to a bout against each other early next year, but nothing is official yet. Why not try to take a hammer to those plans?
Certainly nothing will come of calling out Silva. It was such a strange move that it will likely be forgotten almost immediately, as the UFC’s schedule picks up again to close out the year.
Maybe that will be a good thing for Davis.
Better to leave fans with memories of him grinding one out over Teixeira, even if his methods left a little something to be desired. It may not have been the fight we’d all been waiting for, but it was exactly the fight he needed to stay in the conversation.
Then the conversation got too weird to be of any use.
Saturday night, UFC 179 marked the UFC’s return to both pay-per-view and the country of Brazil. The card was headlined by a featherweight championship thriller in Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes, which turned out to be the only really good fight on the paid …
Saturday night, UFC 179 marked the UFC’s return to both pay-per-view and the country of Brazil. The card was headlined by a featherweight championship thriller in Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes, which turned out to be the only really good fight on the paid portion of the card.
The co-main event was a light heavyweight scrap that featured Brazilian Glover Teixeira and American Phil Davis. After three plodding rounds that was constantly showered in boos from the fans, Davis took a unanimous decision over the former title challenger.
Teixeira’s loss marked his second in a row, with the first coming at the hands of UFC champ Jon Jones. It puts him in a must-win situation next time out, as losing streaks in the UFC ultimately spell the end of one’s tenure with the company.
What’s next for Teixeira? Here are three opponents that could be in his immediate future.
JimiManuwa-Mauricio Rua loser
The next UFC event to grace Brazil possesses a main event in the form of JimiManuwa vs. Mauricio Rua. It is a high stakes bout for both men, with the winner moving closer to the title picture and the loser scrambling to get back to the win column.
Does that not sound like what Teixeira just went through last night?
Both men would stylistically match up well with Teixeira. Both men are vicious strikers that would entertain Teixeira on the feet.
Though Rua has slowed down a step, he has shown in fights like the one he had with James Te Huna that he can still add to highlight reels with his KO ability. A scrap with Teixeira would be a great addition to any card, especially a card in Brazil.
Then you have Manuwa, who is a young bull that has beat up the UFC light heavyweight division for the most part. His different standup style would make for an interesting contrast with that of Teixeira.
Rafael Cavalcante
Speaking of fellow Brazilians, former Strikeforce champion Rafael Cavalcante is another guy who would match up well with Teixeira, as both men are strikers that bring entertainment to the cage regularly.
Cavalcante‘s UFC tenure has been up and down so far, but there is no doubt he is a talented fighter. His win over Igor Pokrajac in the UFC reminded us that he can really be something special when given the opportunity to shine.
Again, matching him up with Teixeira, a fellow Brazilian, makes this a potential headliner of a small Brazilian card or a main card bout on a pay-per-view. Either way this fight would not lack fireworks like Teixeira’s bout with Davis lacked.
Anthony Perosh-Guto Inocente loser
Yes, yes, I know I am stretching matchups here, but that’s how shallow the pool of talent light heavyweight is in the UFC right now. That’s why they need to go on a signing spree in the hope of grabbing some diamonds in the rough.
That said, Anthony Perosh and GutoInocente do have some redeeming values that make them solid competitors.
On one hand, Perosh is a seasoned UFC veteran with gnarly Brazilian jiu-jitsu skill from top position. He comes forward aggressively looking for takedowns so he can incorporate that game.
Then you have a young lion in Inocente still trying to prove himself in the UFC. He is highly touted by his teammates and has good striking skills to matchup with Teixeira.
It’s a long shot, but if the UFC wants Glover back in the win column, they may give him a gimme fight.
When