Fool's Silva

UFC112 was perhaps one of the most controversial events to take place in the company’s history due to Anderson Silva’s antics. There has been so much written and said about it over the last week, I thought I would put some of my own random thoughts together – and coming from a slightly different angle than the main stream media.

How much of Anderson Silva’s recent performances and antics are related to poor stylistic match-making? Taking the injury to Belfort into account of course, apart from Forrest who arguably got the best out of him, maybe Joe Silva and co take some of the blame with the selections of Coté, Leites and Maia? Could they have selected potentially inferior fighters (or equal) to those three, and forced Silva to fight? The Sonnen fight will almost certainly bring far more entertainment than any of those three, and I think we could have predicted that before any of the fights. I think it is reasonably fair to the division does look light in quality right now. Perhaps losing Dan Henderson from the division could have been a bigger blow than many have thought.

Kevin Iole is one of my favourite writers, and he had plenty to say on the subject. In one of his responses to a mailbag question this week, he said: “He (Silva) fights now only as much as he needs to in order to win". I wonder if that is also becoming somewhat true of GSP. I am certainly not accusing him of playing the same stupid games as Silva, but looking at his last four fights, it could be argued that he has given less credence to finishing opponents, and more to purely dominating them over five rounds with his supreme technical skills, conditioning, and wrestling. I take nothing away from him, I think he is truly amazing. My feeling when watching GSP in his last four fights is that he has become a safety-first and cautious fighter to a degree, and he is that superior to many if not all of his opponents in his weight class, that he takes few risks and does "as much as he needs to in order to win."

My final random point is taking a different perspective on how Silva’s behaviour could affect the UFC. With the developments of most sports these days, the development of the gambling markets around the sports follows shortly behind and thus has the potential to become a major and stable source of revenue within sport. Whether one likes it or not, gambling will always be present around most sports. Personally, I believe that the variables in gambling on individual sports like Boxing or MMA is a dangerous game - unless you are close to the fighters and know exactly how the preparations have been etc, there are too many factors which can influence a fight to gamble money.

At a time when especially in European football, fighting match-fixing and corruption is a major challenge for organisations and federations, the integrity of a sport should not be brought into question where possible - especially due to the foolish actions of a fighter. Anderson Silva's actions will have cost some people a lot of money who may have bet on him winning by a stoppage or in an early round. I am not for one minute suggesting anything underhand in Silva's actions, I am purely pointing out that the ramifications of his actions are far reaching and potentially more damaging to the business (than purely losing fans) than many people may realise.