Tag: UFC 183

Nick Diaz has been known to skip press conferences, open workouts and various other media events, but he always shows up to fight, even when paired against one of the greatest fighters in MMA history.

From a bird’s-eye view, Diaz’s mettlesome attempt to go up in weight and ruin the long-awaited return of former UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva seemed like a pipe dream. It seemed unrealistic on the surface to believe that a welterweight coming off of back-to-back losses to Georges St-Pierre and Carlos Condit would be capable of usurping a fighter as great as Silva.

While Diaz didn’t actually win at UFC 183, he turned a pipe dream into reality by matching wits with Silva in a 25-minute striking match. The settled dust from Saturday’s headliner left plenty of questions lingering on the state of MMA judging. All three judges scored the fight for Silva, with two judges giving the Brazilian all five rounds.

Immediately after the fight, Diaz told UFC commentator Joe Rogan that he felt he won “every round,” and his tone didn’t change at the post-fight press conference: “I know how I feel at the end of the fight. I don’t know what the judges are thinking, but I definitely pushed forward the whole time. I don’t know how they judge fights sometimes.”

Pundits suspected Diaz to be the better boxer of the two fighters leading up to the proposed superfight.

Silva, who is arguably the greatest striker in UFC history, fought a smart fight in refusing to give up distance to the Stockton brawler. As Diaz pushed forward to gain ground, Silva would throw side kicks to the knee to stagger his movement or angle his way out of the pocket to reset his stance.

Diaz is known for his nefarious cage antics and taunting, but it was pretty obvious early in the fight that he was growing increasingly frustrated with Silva’s conservative approach. At one point in the first round, he even dropped to the ground and openly mocked the former UFC champ for not engaging.

In fights that go the distance, Diaz currently stands at 5-8, an alarming and befuddling stat that he hopes to improve on:

I get real confused on how to win a fight out here initially. And then, nowadays, when you watch their counterstrikes and all that stuff. I don’t know what’s what until I see it. I don’t know how many punches were thrown or what. I just know that I could see this guy’s punches. He don’t think he could have finished me. If anybody was gonna finish anybody, it was gonna be me finishing him.

After suffering his third consecutive loss, the future is once again up in the air for Diaz. He still has the skill set to contend at 170 pounds, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he simply decided to pick up his ball and go home.

 

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon and FanRag Sports.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

So, the UFC 183 main event was pretty weird, right? Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz conspired to produce a spectacle that was bizarrely compelling in every sense of the phrase.

In truth, even the buildup to the fight was a little peculiar. Unlike most mixed martial artists, Diaz doesn’t tend to offer his opponents much respect prior to a bout. There are no smiles, fist bumps, handshakes, etc. And brohugs are absolutely out of the question.

It was odd, then, to watch the 31-year-old offer Silva a handshake and a hug during media day. Finally, it seemed, he was up against an opponent who had earned his pre-fight respect. In light of this, I anticipated little in the way of mid-fight trash talk from Stockton’s favourite son.

I should have known better.

Referee “Big” John McCarthy had barely uttered his fight-starting catchphrase before Diaz began barking obscenities at the former UFC middleweight king. Not content with verbally blaspheming the consensus Greatest of All Time, Diaz dropped to the floor and struck a pose that said to Silva: “Draw me like one of your French girls.”

Outclowning The Spider is no mean feat, and it made the fight utterly absorbing despite both men being relatively inactive.

Diaz wasn’t pushing his usual life-altering pace, but he was having moments of real success, landing flush shots time and again. Perhaps owing to his time spent with Joe Schilling and Artem Levin, Diaz also utilized leg kicks consistently for the first time in his career.

For his part, Silva countered nicely and racked up the points during Diaz’s frequent periods of inactivity. The Brazilian at times looked tentative, but who could blame him for harbouring a few doubts? When the 25 minutes were up, there was no question that Silva had earned the decision—despite Diaz’s trademark confusion over how fights are actually scored.

But perhaps the most unusual part of an already-offbeat evening was the reaction to the fight. There seemed to be very little agreement on how to interpret the action inside of the cage. Some optimistic souls felt we had just witnessed the rebirth of the 39-year-old Silva, while others suggested that it might be time for him to hang up the gloves.

There was also some confusion over Diaz’s excessive clowning and his shockingly low output. However, the revelation that he had been dealing with an arm injury that may require surgery certainly goes some way toward explaining his tactics.

What should we make of UFC 183’s main event, then? It’s difficult to say. The calls for Silva’s retirement are probably premature. This would be a nice win for him to go out on, but the performance offered a few glimpses of genius that indicate he might still have something to offer the division.

Another crack at Chris Weidman would, as Ray Longo suggested, probably end badly for the Brazilian. His chin was able to hold up against the shots of the much smaller Diaz, but one should be skeptical of its ability to absorb the kind of power wielded by the likes of Vitor Belfort, Lyoto Machida and Weidman.

Still, if he does choose to continue fighting, it should be interesting to see how competitive Silva can be with the division’s elite, now that he looks vaguely human.

What Diaz chooses to do next is anyone’s guess. His post-fight remarks were encouraging, however. He seemed clear-headed and remarkably upbeat, given his usual demeanour after a loss.

When the decision was read, most of us probably anticipated Diaz retiring on the spot. But surprisingly, he left the door slightly ajar for another fight. This is progress of a sort and might be an indication that his outlook on the sport has matured.

We might not have seen the best of Silva and Diaz at UFC 183, but we saw enough to remind us that MMA is a far less interesting place without them. Let’s just hope they stick around, if only for a little while longer.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com