Oh?!? It's BIG RON!!!

Some have stated that Anderson Silva is washed up, and/or has lost his touch in evaluating his last two performances. However, I blame the weakness of the division, and poor matchmaking. Anderson Silva fights for the middleweight division, and much like the champion before him, has cleaned out the majority of his top competition. His two latest match-ups have been against opponents who have been blatantly afraid to fully engage in the fight with Silva. People have accused Silva of showboating and not going after his opponents, but this has never been his style. Obviously his current style has worked for him because he is still the champion of his division, and ranked amongst the best pound for pound fighters in the world.

Two fights ago before Silva fought Patrick Cote, he faced off in the octagon against James Irvin in the light heavyweight division. Against a fighter like Irvin, Silva excels because Irvin wanted to push the pace and take the fight to Silva. However this is a strategy that is not conducive to victory against him because the first minute of every Silva fight is spent with him studying your every move and determining his timing. Once you push the pace he releases his superior hand speed and counts on his precision striking to dominate his opponents. Once Irvin pushed the pace and got in Silva’s face he was rewarded with a right hand to the face and several more behind as Silva got the KO against him. However I can’t really fault him for this strategy, because trying to grind out a victory on the ground will not work, as shown with Travis Lutter and Dan Henderson. In my humble opinion, they were the closest to defeating Silva, and even they didn’t make it out of the second round, both being submission victories for Silva.

Silva has not lost a decision victory since his first MMA fight nine years ago, and it was a split decision, which means he was not dominated. Since then he has lost three times, two submissions and one disqualification. What does this mean? This means you’re not going to beat Silva on the cards, you have to finish him in order to win the fight. I won’t calculate the percentage but to put it in perspective, he has 28 fights, and four of them are losses; of those four losses, one of them is a decision loss. In a five round middleweight fight who wants to take the chance of outpointing Silva on the way to a victory? Apparently Thales Leites and Patrick Cote didn’t do their research. Silva appeared uninspired in his matches with Cote and Leites, and rather than blame him for not making the fight exciting, I blame his opponents and the matchmaking. None of his other opponents were content to make it into the third round or to simply dive on the ground and hope that he followed. All of his other opponents wanted to take the fight to Silva, and risk everything to win, because that’s the only way you’re going to beat Anderson Silva. Matching up against him has been difficult but what must be taken into account is that if the opponent is not on the striking level of Silva, he’s not going to win. Silva’s BJJ is good enough to keep you from submitting him (ask Lutter). So, who do we match him up with in order to make for a good fight at the very least, if not an upset victory? Enter Forrest Griffin.

For the casual fan that watches Anderson Silva, a fight against Irvin, or Dan Henderson, or against Rich Franklin will always be far more exciting than against the likes of fighters like Cote or Leites who were content to survive. Forrest Griffin is more along the lines of an in your face fighter, though he will definitely come prepared with a plan. In his last two fights Griffin was willing to throw caution to the wind and lay it all on the line for victory against Rampage Jackson, and Rashad Evans, arguably two of the best light heavyweight fighters in MMA. One resulted in a decision victory and the other in TKO. Even in defeat against Evans, many can make the case that Griffin was decisively winning the fight before he got caught in a bad situation. With a fighter that’s willing to bang it out with his opponents, and with Silva who is patient enough to take what his opponent brings, I don’t see how we can expect anything but an exciting battle in Philadelphia when these two go head to head.

Hooray for genius matchmaking.

P.S. Selected UFC 101 fight predictions coming on Monday (8/3/09)