Before the fight I posted about Floyd Mayweather telling Robert Guerrero “This ain’t Berto,” and how Silva probably should have told Weidman “This ain’t Munoz.” After Silva clowned around so much that he just got caught and finished, I guess Weidman could have dropped a “This ain’t Bonnar.” Silva played a game that works on fighters who aren’t as good as Weidman and he paid the price.
Silva clowned so much, for so long that he just got Nate Campbell’ed:
In all honesty this was one of the all-time most embarrassing knockouts in combat sports history. It was an all-time great fighter playing around and showing so little respect that he got himself knocked out.
In a way, it sort of feels like we were cheated. Silva’s streak lasted so long that I wanted it to end in a way that felt like a better fighter had finally arrived. Not to take anything away from Weidman, but I don’t know that he is truly better than Silva if Silva fights to his talent level.
After the fight Silva said he was done with fighting for titles, that he wasn’t retiring but that he was tired of fighting for the belt. I don’t know what that really means long-term, but I guess we’ll see.
- Chris Weidman is the man now. I never even really thought about what would be the next fight for him, but I hope it’s not a Mark Munoz rematch, even with Munoz looking fantastic against Tim Boetsch. I suppose the Vitor Belfort fight should be first up, but I was so certain of Silva winning that I didn’t give it the slightest thought.
- Amazingly, I’ve picked against Silva in so many stupid fights, just because I thought it was fun and liked to try to rationalize the upset pick. I picked Silva to lose to James Irvin, for christ’s sake! But here I go picking Silva and he gets flattened.
- Frankie Edgar looked great tonight. Charles Oliviera gave him a good fight but Edgar used fantastic combination striking and just better talent overall to win a sensational fight. I don’t know that I’ll ever like Edgar to beat Aldo, but in another fight or two I’d love to see him try.
- Tim Kennedy picked up a win in a slightly boring fight. He chose to fight inside the clinch for the most part, which seemed like a bad idea. After all, he had a big striking advantage. But Kennedy survived when it went to the ground and even had a good stretch of dominating the fight when they were on the ground with solid ground and pound. His style isn’t really that “boring” normally, but he fought how he had to against Roger Gracie, who was a real threat if he got too careless.
- As mentioned already, Mark Munoz looked fantastic against Tim Boetsch. Boetsch fought well but Munoz was very strong and he dominated on the ground, he just controlled Boetsch and pounded him on the ground. It was Munoz’s career best performance, but I’m not ready to say he should be fighting for the title just yet.
- Cub Swanson has developed into a fantastic fighter, something I just never saw coming. I was sure he was just going to be a mid-tier guy who put on fun fights but lost to talented opponents. He beat on Denis Siver in some pretty incredible ways in their UFC 162 fight tonight.
- Chris Leben needs to hand up his gloves. I don’t care that one judge was out of his (or her) mind and gave Leben the fight on the cards, he looked awful and is well past his expiration date. He’s taken a ton of punishment, including a bunch more tonight. I simply don’t think there’s anything left in the sport for him.
- Gabriel Gonzaga did what he does to guys like Dave Herman and crushed him with a big knockout in only a few seconds. Herman’s career will likely always be defined by the things he wasn’t able to accomplish despite having really solid talent.
- Edson Barboza’s leg kick finish of Rafaello Oliveira was an exercise in brutality. It’s the second time he has stopped a man with leg kicks and was actually hard to watch as Oliveira’s leg swelled up and started to bleed. It’s just too bad we didn’t get the fight with Makdessi that was supposed to go down.
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