Anderson Silva

UFC 103 Notes: Belfort Moves to Forefront of Middleweight Title Picture

A win over Rich Franklin was expected to make Vitor Belfort an instant contender for Anderson Silva’s UFC middleweight title. But according to UFC President Dana White, Belfort may have positioned himself as the leading candidate for Silva’s next title defense, even before Dan Henderson and Nate Marquardt.

“You know, I think he might be ready now,” White said at last night’s UFC 103 post-fight press conference.

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Quick Hits: Silva to Undergo Elbow Surgery, Overeem to Fight in October & More

— UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva will reportedly undergo elbow surgery that will keep him out of action for the remainder of the year. Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, recently announced that his client would be taking a break from active competition after fighting twice already this year. Details regarding the extent of the injury and how it was suffered remain unknown at this time. [Twitter.com]

— Recently criticized Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem will make a much-awaited return to MMA action at Golden Glory 11 on October 17 in Amsterdam. An opponent for Overeem has not yet been named. Overeem’s training partners, Siyar Bahadurzada and Dion Staring, will also be on the card, which is to feature a mix of MMA and boxing bouts. [Fighters.com]

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UFC 101: Declaration Quick Results

B.J. Penn def. Kenny Florian – Submission (Rear Naked Choke)
Anderson Silva def. Forrest Griffin – KO (Punch)
Aaron Riley def. Shane Nelson – Decision (Unanimous)
Johny Hendricks def. Amir Sadollah – TKO (Punches)
Ricardo Almeida def. Kendall Grove – Decision (Unanimous)
Kurt Pellegrino def. Josh Neer – Decision (Unanimous)
John Howard def. Tamdan McCrory – Decision (Split)
Alessio Sakara def. Thales Leites – Decision (Split)
Matt Riddle def. an Cramer – Decision (Unanimous)
George Sotiropoulos def. George Roop – Submission (Kimura)
Jesse Lennox def. Danillo Villefort – TKO

All Fighters on Weight For UFC 101

The official weigh-in results for UFC 101: Declaration are in and all fighters successfully made weight in preparation for their bouts Saturday night at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The card will be headlined by a UFC lightweight title bout between champion B.J.Penn and Kenny Florian. The co-main event will feature UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva moving up to light heavyweight to take on former champ Forrest Griffin.

Main Card:

B.J. Penn (155 lbs) vs. Kenny Florian (155 lbs)
Anderson Silva (205 lbs) vs. Forrest Griffin (205 lbs)
Ricardo Almeida (185 lbs) vs. Kendall Grove (185.5 lbs)
Josh Neer (155.5 lbs) vs. Kurt Pellegrino (154.5 lbs)
Johny Hendricks (171 lbs) vs. Amir Sadollah (166.5 lbs)

Preliminary Bouts:

Aaron Riley (154 lbs) vs. Shane Nelson (156 lbs)
John Howard (169.5 lbs) vs. Tamdan McCrory (170 lbs)
Alessio Sakara (185.5 lbs) vs. Thales Leites (185 lbs)
Dan Cramer (169.5 lbs) vs. Matthew Riddle (170 lbs)
George Sotiropoulos (155 lbs) vs. George Roop (154 lbs)
Danillo VIllefort (170.25 lbs) vs. Jesse Lennox (171 lbs)

Quote of the Day: Wanderlei Silva Wants to Bet Anderson on Franklin Fight

“I go to knock him out. I have trained so much and Rich won’t last two rounds. I think it is good Anderson has been preparing him. I hope he is also on the corner. I want to dare him to bet $50,000. I put these amount and Anderson or his sponsors, Ed Soares or Joinha, bet another part. Who wins takes the money.”

Longtime PRIDE middleweight champion Wanderlei Silva tells Fighters Only Magazine that would be willing to bet former training partner Anderson Silva that he will be victorious within two rounds in his catch-weight bout against Rich Franklin at UFC 99 on June 13.

It looks like the war of words between the two Brazilians isn’t going to be ending anytime soon.

Has the Weight of the Title Become Too Much for Anderson Silva?

Like it or not, Anderson Silva has changed.

Gone are the performances that Silva put on against Rich Franklin, Nate Marquardt, James Irvin, Travis Lutter, and Dan Henderson. They have been replaced with passive-aggressive performances against Patrick Cote and Thales Leites.

So what happened to him exactly? Many theories have been thrown around. Some have said that the UFC hasn’t been able to provide Silva with opponents of interest. Some say that he’s just bored with the sport. Others claim that he might be too interested in Roy Jones Jr and is trying to find his way out of the UFC.

But one new possibility that has come to light is the pressure of keeping the UFC’s middleweight title. Silva has already passed Matt Hughes’ mark for consecutive title defenses and is now approaching his all-time mark of nine. Has it all become too much for Anderson?

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Jones Agrees to Meet Silva in UFC; Dana White Nixes Idea

It seems as if Roy Jones Jr and Anderson Silva’s constant quest to fight each other will never end, at least not at this rate. The newest development in the saga comes courtesy of Jones, who according to Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, would be willing to fight “The Spider” instead of the Octagon.

The idea still isn’t sitting well with UFC President Dana White:

“You won’t see a Silva versus Jones fight while Silva is under contract with me,” White said Tuesday. “I don’t want to say anything bad about Roy Jones, I like Roy Jones and was a fan of his, but he mattered like fifteen years ago. He’s not anywhere near the best boxer in the world. He must’ve spent all his money.”

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“I could do it, make it huge, make money, but I could have done a fight like this when we were bleeding money [in the early 2000s],” White said. “The fight would make some money, but it hurts MMA in the long term. We don’t do that because we love the sport. That’s a Pride or K-1 matchup. It’s not what we do.”

This isn’t just a matter of White saying no out of the blue. According to the article, the management teams of both Jones and Silva agreed on terms of an MMA match before bringing the idea to White, who promptly shot it down.

While it seems that White would be crazy to do, one has to dig deeper into his potential reasoning. If Dana were to put on a Jones-Silva bout, RJJ would be asking for money, and lots of it. Possibly more than any mixed martial artist has ever been paid. The UFC is already reluctant to hand out the big bucks as it is, and a big payout to Jones could end up forcing other fighters to start speaking up for their fair share.

On top of that, everyone knows that even though the fight will be taking place under MMA rules, Silva would likely opt to stand and trade with Jones, boxing style. Silva has a much better chance with 4 oz. gloves on his hands rather than 16 oz. mitts, but remember that Jones will be wearing the smaller gloves as well. Did Dana make the right decision here? At least in terms of his investment, it’s very possible.

The Case for Forrest Griffin

Based on most of the reading I’ve done over the past 24 hours, it seems that Forrest Griffin is the underdog going into his light heavyweight superfight against Anderson Silva this August in Philadelphia. It’s probably for good reason too. Silva has the edge on Griffin standing and on the ground.

This isn’t the first time that Griffin has been in this position before. He was essentially written off against both Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, but ended up knocking both of them down the 205 lb ladder. Will he able to do upset Silva as well? It’s possible:

This will be a seriously competitive fight, regardless of what people are saying.  Forrest isn’t an amazing technical striker, but he is very good at throwing in high volume and overwhelming his opponents with his relentless pace.  This is only a 3 round fight, and his style tends to do very well on score cards.  Anderson can’t just take his time getting into this fight, or he could find himself down a round or even two going into the third.

Forrest beat Shogun and Rampage when they were ranked number one in the world at light heavyweight.  People find reasons to diminish these wins, but it’s an exercise in futility.  You can do it to diminish almost anyone’s wins in a sport as unpredictable as MMA.  The bottom line is that before both of those fights, people asked the same exact question people are asking now: “How can Forrest win?”  I admit I was one of them, I thought that Rampage just had too much for Forrest, but it wasn’t the case.  Even if you believe Rampage won that fight, you still can’t deny that it was extremely close, and Forrest performed far better than most expected him to.  Saying Rampage performed badly unfairly diminishes the fact that guys don’t just perform in a vacuum, they perform based on what their opponents bring to the table.  It’s no accident that lots of guys have “off nights” when they fight Forrest Griffin.

I picked Forrest to beat Shogun last year for the fun of it. I honestly thought he was going to get destroyed. I did the same when he fought Rampage, but only because I knew that Jackson eats leg kicks at will in almost all of his fights. Strangely enough, I’m getting the urge to pick Forrest again. Silva’s last two performances against Cote and Leites, are probably the biggest reasons why. It’s obvious that Silva is starting to get bored in the cage since very few are willing to attack him and allow him to counter. Despite the best wishes of many fans, there’s no guarantee that Griffin is going to buck this trend.

Forrest isn’t a better overall fighter than Anderson, but he does sport two qualities that Silva has been severely lacking in recently - heart and the ability to stay on course with a strategy. If the guys at Xtreme Couture can develop a gameplan that Forrest can follow to perfection, Silva’s reign of terror over the UFC might be coming to an abrupt end via a shocking decision.

Silva: “Franklin Isn’t Training With Me”

Reports circulated earlier this week that former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin would be using the services of an old rival, reigning pound-for-pound king Anderson Silva, in preparation for his upcoming catch-weight bout against Wanderlei Silva in June.

Franklin’s camp declined to confirm the news, which would have only escalated a growing feud between Anderson and Wanderlei, former training partners that now seem to be a collision course to face each other in the future. However, according to Silva, Franklin hasn’t even contacted him about training together:

He didn’t said any word to me about it, but he’s gonna face a Brazilian, so it’s hard that something will happen. I don’t have anything against Franklin [or] Wanderlei, both are great fighters. In another situation, I’d train with him, for sure. My gym is open for everyone. Whoever goes there can have classes and I won’t have any problems if he decides to go there.

I had to clean up the quote a little bit so it would make sense. I’m not sure how to take this. Tatame is a great site for news related to Brazilian fighters, but quotes are often skewed during the translation from Portugese to Englsih and so forth.

If Franklin and Silva really are training together, they could be keeping things quiet so the repercussions of Anderson helping another fighter get ready to face another Brazilian, and a former teammate at that, are relatively minimal. Franklin’s camp also using Anderson and Wand’s shaky relationship these days as mind games could also be a possibility as well.

Leites Preparing for Huge Test Against Silva

Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace Thales Leites discusses his upcoming middleweight title showdown with Anderson Silva, whom he has called the “toughest opponent in his career”, at this weekend’s UFC 97 event, which will take place at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.