UFC 162: Anderson Silva Knocked Out For Being Cocky

I’ve never been a fan of Anderson Silva. Even since his days in PRIDE – the Japanese fighting organization that’s been used as a talent farm for the UFC on more than one occasion – I knew he wasn’t the kind of fighter I’d like to watch. Sure, he’s got power. Sure, he’s fast. Sure, it’s impressive to watch him dodge a dozen punches in a row. All of those things would be major attractions to me if it weren’t for the fact that the guy is incredibly full of himself.

In every fight in which I have ever seen Anderson compete, there has been one of three scenarios. He either comes out guns blazing and steps to his opponent with a purpose, he comes out and spends the entire fight keeping his distance and refusing to engage or he comes out and does shenanigans in an attempt to throw his opponent off his game and cause him to get angry enough to make a fatal mistake.

The third scenario is usually when he doesn’t want to engage on the ground. Any time he finds a fighter whose ground game is superior to his own, he attempts to force the fight into a standing battle by goading and taunting his opponent into slugging with him. He knows his striking skills are better than most (not all) of the fighters out there so he will use psychology to get them to engage him on his terms.

I always said it would get him knocked out. To all of the nay-sayers out there: I WIN!

That is exactly what happened on Saturday night when Anderson Silva took his first-ever canvas nap at UFC 162. Here’s how it went down:

In the first round, his opponent – now middleweight champion Chris Weidman – took him down in impressive fashion, after which Chris landed several hard strikes and managed to secure a heel-hook from which Anderson was able to escape. After that, Anderson clearly did not want to have anything to do with fighting on the ground and began taunting Weidman to get him to commit to a standing battle.

Anderson used his ploys to good effect. He constantly waved Weidman in, told Weidman to hit him, showed him where to attempt a kick and then attempted to land hard strikes every time Weidman would step into the pocket. Unfortunately his strikes didn’t have the intended effect and round 1 ended with, in my opinion, a 10-9 score for Weidman.

The second round held more of the same. Anderson taunted, Weidman followed and tried to find him. Then, at about 1:10 in the second round, Weidman landed the first of half a dozen punches which would see Anderson Silva going to sleep and taking the first loss in 18 fights… his first loss in 7 years.

Weidman landed a choppy left hook, after which Anderson did the floppy-leg dance, taunting Weidman who responded with “punches in bunches”, missing with a follow up right, then grazing Anderson with a right back-hand, which caused Anderson to even out his feet and lean backwards…with his chin way too high in the air.

After the back-hand, Weidman threw another left hook and this one found its mark, instantly rolling Anderson’s eyes to the back of his head and sending him to the canvas. After three more shots to the head, referee Herb Dean stepped in to call the fight and declare Weidman the victor.

That’s what happens when you act like a jerk-off. Now we’ll get to see what this Weidman kid is made of and we’ll almost certainly get to see a huge expansion in the middleweight category after Silva announced that he will not seek to regain his title in what is by far the strangest post-fight interview I’ve ever seen in MMA.

Here’s to losers finally losing!