***spoilers*** UFC News and Discussion Thread

[Rich]

Sonnen's in ability to finish Anderson comes back to haunt him again, a superfight for Anderson to allow the middleweight division to normalise itself over the next 6 to 9 months would be excellent, it could give us a contender or two.

Anderson is frankly the best there ever has been. He is not the Klitschkos of the 185 division, he is the Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis of MMA. Simply the best there has ever been, a trailblazer of which there has been no equal as of yet (even Fedor), and there will be other great fighters, but they will all be compared to Anderson Silva before anybody else, Fedor, Wanderlei, Sakuraba, Gracie, Liddell, GSP, all brilliant, all the best in the world at one time or another, but none of them have been as consistently breath taking as Anderson.

Rafael needs to watch a bit more MMA before he can make such grandiose statements, but I am sure that will come with time and experience. The fact of the matter is Sonnen is a top class wrestler who was shown to not be the best fighter in the world and Anderson, like a certain champion at 205 has an amount of detractors due to his success that does take a bit of shine off of impressive wins.

[Benjamin]

C'mon man, Sonnen was so entertaining he even won a PRO WRESTLING award for best interviews!

This would be the pro wrestling awards that has a bunch of MMA exclusive awards and has been including MMA fighters and promotions in its other categories for about ten years?

Yes, but it's impressive though, and weird. Pro wrestlers should win that award every year.

Impressive? No.

Weird? No.

[Rafael]

C'mon man, Sonnen was so entertaining he even won a PRO WRESTLING award for best interviews!

This would be the pro wrestling awards that has a bunch of MMA exclusive awards and has been including MMA fighters and promotions in its other categories for about ten years?

Yes, but it's impressive though, and weird. Pro wrestlers should win that award every year.

Impressive? No.

Weird? No.

Of course it is. In MMA, you're not trained to give great interviews, that's why it's impressive. And as I wrote before, pro wrestling should be winning that.

[Rafael]

Sonnen's in ability to finish Anderson comes back to haunt him again, a superfight for Anderson to allow the middleweight division to normalise itself over the next 6 to 9 months would be excellent, it could give us a contender or two.

Anderson is frankly the best there ever has been.

He is not the Klitschkos of the 185 division, he is the Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis of MMA. Simply the best there has ever been, a trailblazer of which there has been no equal as of yet (even Fedor), and there will be other great fighters, but they will all be compared to Anderson Silva before anybody else, Fedor, Wanderlei, Sakuraba, Gracie, Liddell, GSP, all brilliant, all the best in the world at one time or another, but none of them have been as consistently breath taking as Anderson.

Rafael needs to watch a bit more MMA before he can make such grandiose statements, but I am sure that will come with time and experience. The fact of the matter is Sonnen is a top class wrestler who was shown to not be the best fighter in the world and Anderson, like a certain champion at 205 has an amount of detractors due to his success that does take a bit of shine off of impressive wins

In a certain way, he is the Klitschkos. He said after beating Belfort and in a recent interview that the 'Fight Of The Century' ( as it was regarded by brazilian journalists for the second time in two years ), would be Him vs. His Clone. ( Vladimir vs. Vitaliy )

Now, I still rate Fedor over Silva, because if you look at how long Fedor has been on top and compare his opponents to Silva's opponents, he is sure better.

Edited July 9, 2012 by RafaelFms

[Quom]

What? Fedor's opponents? The can crusher? You serious?

[Plubby]

I don't think Fedor has beaten two opponent's the level of the Chael Sonnen's that Anderson has beaten Maybe Cro Cop back in 2005.

[Rich]

Sonnen's in ability to finish Anderson comes back to haunt him again, a superfight for Anderson to allow the middleweight division to normalise itself over the next 6 to 9 months would be excellent, it could give us a contender or two.

Anderson is frankly the best there ever has been.

He is not the Klitschkos of the 185 division, he is the Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis of MMA. Simply the best there has ever been, a trailblazer of which there has been no equal as of yet (even Fedor), and there will be other great fighters, but they will all be compared to Anderson Silva before anybody else, Fedor, Wanderlei, Sakuraba, Gracie, Liddell, GSP, all brilliant, all the best in the world at one time or another, but none of them have been as consistently breath taking as Anderson.

Rafael needs to watch a bit more MMA before he can make such grandiose statements, but I am sure that will come with time and experience. The fact of the matter is Sonnen is a top class wrestler who was shown to not be the best fighter in the world and Anderson, like a certain champion at 205 has an amount of detractors due to his success that does take a bit of shine off of impressive wins

In a certain way, he is the Klitschkos. He said after beating Belfort and in a recent interview that the 'Fight Of The Century' ( as it was regarded by brazilian journalists for the second time in two years ), would be Him vs. His Clone. ( Vladimir vs. Vitaliy )

Now, I still rate Fedor over Silva, because if you look at how long Fedor has been on top and compare his opponents to Silva's opponents, he is sure better.

Fedor's opponents are not as impressive though, Fedor's run through the 00's was unbelievably impressive, and he did beat the likes of Big Nog, Cro Cop, and Sylvia at the top of their games, but he also faced some absolute "cans" in the likes of Zuluzinho and Hong Man Choi. Anderson has fought top fighter after top fighter, former champions like Vitor Belfort, Forrest Griffin, Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson were made to look like his play things, the guy has not had an easy fight in the over 6 years he has fought for the UFC, and he has won and dominated every fight, except for the first Sonnen fight, which he still won, Fedor is great, but for me Anderson is the greatest.

[Drock007]

Sonnen's in ability to finish Anderson comes back to haunt him again, a superfight for Anderson to allow the middleweight division to normalise itself over the next 6 to 9 months would be excellent, it could give us a contender or two.

Anderson is frankly the best there ever has been.

He is not the Klitschkos of the 185 division, he is the Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis of MMA. Simply the best there has ever been, a trailblazer of which there has been no equal as of yet (even Fedor), and there will be other great fighters, but they will all be compared to Anderson Silva before anybody else, Fedor, Wanderlei, Sakuraba, Gracie, Liddell, GSP, all brilliant, all the best in the world at one time or another, but none of them have been as consistently breath taking as Anderson.

Rafael needs to watch a bit more MMA before he can make such grandiose statements, but I am sure that will come with time and experience. The fact of the matter is Sonnen is a top class wrestler who was shown to not be the best fighter in the world and Anderson, like a certain champion at 205 has an amount of detractors due to his success that does take a bit of shine off of impressive wins

In a certain way, he is the Klitschkos. He said after beating Belfort and in a recent interview that the 'Fight Of The Century' ( as it was regarded by brazilian journalists for the second time in two years ), would be Him vs. His Clone. ( Vladimir vs. Vitaliy )

Now, I still rate Fedor over Silva, because if you look at how long Fedor has been on top and compare his opponents to Silva's opponents, he is sure better.

Fedor's opponents are not as impressive though, Fedor's run through the 00's was unbelievably impressive, and he did beat the likes of Big Nog, Cro Cop, and Sylvia at the top of their games, but he also faced some absolute "cans" in the likes of Zuluzinho and Hong Man Choi. Anderson has fought top fighter after top fighter, former champions like Vitor Belfort, Forrest Griffin, Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson were made to look like his play things, the guy has not had an easy fight in the over 6 years he has fought for the UFC, and he has won and dominated every fight, except for the first Sonnen fight, which he still won, Fedor is great, but for me Anderson is the greatest.

Defiantly agreeing Anderson Silva is the best between him and Fedor but saying Silva has fought Top Fighter after Top Fighter is kinda a lie Chris Leben, Travis Lutter, James Irvin, Patrick Cote, Thales Leites are not Top Fighters but defiantly not cans like Hong Man Choi and Zuluzinho

[Quom]

I don't think the two can be compared. Pride was hardly the cleanest of organisations which will forever put a taint over the guys who dominated there for me (whether this is justified or not is a different discussion. On top of this it's quite hard to retroactively judge just how tough a match up was. I mean if Penn beat Edgar people would likely list Edgar as one of the easy fights for Penn. Beyond which a lot of fighters seem to drop-off steeply after they get handily beaten (Arlovski, Sylvia) or the lustre is lost from a fighter who prior to being 'exposed' looked legit (I mean Leites actually had a more impressive UFC career in regards to the skills of guys he fought before losing to Silva than Marquadt's UFC record pre-Silva).

It's why I'm not that huge on P4P and GOAT lists because there is no real way to get any accuracy. I guess you could say Silva wins handily based on the fact that he beat Henderson despite Henderson needing to drop down a weight class from his natural size, whereas Fedor couldn't beat Hendo when Hendo moved up (negating Fedor's age by the fact Hendo isn't a spring chicken and was younger when he fought Silva obviously). You could also argue that Fedor's wins which seem impressive were against fighters who were largely skilled in a single area (I don't buy Big Nog as a legit striker, I don't care how much he trained with Cuba's boxing team, it was his willingness and ability to walk through and shrug off big strikes that made his stand up special). Silva also took the belt from a man who I think was expected to be what Anderson Silva became at that weight class.

I can't think of any MW's of Silva's era that I think would have a snowball's chance against him (perhaps Hendo in a rematch), Fedor on the other hand had quite a few dream matches that were left on the table at various times and didn't even clear out his own division in Pride (Barnett). You could also argue that Fedor came along at the perfect time for a heavyweight as there really wasn't a huge amount of world class challengers kicking about during his peak (Couture being able to come out of retirement and take the UFC belt shows this - from Sylvia who is being considered as a decent talent Fedor beat which was after this).

IMHO Fedor's greatest achievement has been somehow managing to get fanboys all over the internet to suck his dick I don't even know if he would be in my list of top 5 fighters of all time.

[Plubby]

Hendo did (relative to others) well against Silva if memory serves until he lost.

[Quom]

Which is why I said to give him a rematch of anyone Silva has already beaten as he's the only guy (prior to Sonnen obv) who looked at all dangerous. Having just re-watched it Sonnen looked better in round one yesterday than Henderson did in his respective fight with Silva.

It's also a good fight for when people say Silva has no BJJ; he just vacuums Hendo from being in side control back to guard (and throws for a triangle in the process before locking in a body lock from the bottom). Henderson was mainly lay and praying and trying to wear Silva out by making him carry his weight (whilst covering his mouth). Silva does eat 3-4 solid punches from Henderson on the feet as well, but walks through them.

Silva's take down defence, work on the mat and ability to not be hurt from punches makes it seem like a Silva that was in a different class to the one who fought Sonnen.

[Benjamin]

C'mon man, Sonnen was so entertaining he even won a PRO WRESTLING award for best interviews!

This would be the pro wrestling awards that has a bunch of MMA exclusive awards and has been including MMA fighters and promotions in its other categories for about ten years?

Yes, but it's impressive though, and weird. Pro wrestlers should win that award every year.

Impressive? No.

Weird? No.

Of course it is. In MMA, you're not trained to give great interviews, that's why it's impressive. And as I wrote before, pro wrestling should be winning that.

No, it's not impressive because nobody cares about those awards, least of all Chael Sonnen or the UFC.

Also, I know this is me simply speaking in hindsight, but Fedor definitely is not in the same class as Silva. I'd even put GSP ahead of Fedor in the best of discussion, and maybe even BJ and if he hadn't lost to Shields maybe even Hendo.

Also, isn't Silva older than Fedor?

Edited July 9, 2012 by Ben D.D. Cuntface

[Quom]

Yes, Silva is older, but Fedor's style would take more of a toll and relied heavily on his reflexes, so once his hand speed and response time dropped he was fucked. Silva sticks to the outside and has/d taken far less shots than Fedor. I subscribe to the theory that MMA years are different to your age. Their seems to be a peak which is different for each fighter that they build to and then decline. I think that the number of fights is an important factor in this. Couture may have fought when he was 48, but it was only his 30th career MMA fight. I think that head shots and knock outs take their toll. I'm not sure if it's physiological or psychological or if fighter just burn out from fighting too often.

[bolleje]

I don't agree that Silva should now face Jones or Henderson in another 'superfight'. "Sonnen vs Silva 2" was labeled as a superfight. If we're gonna do them every six months, they won't be superfights anymore. I think we first need a relative 'normal' fight for Silva... I think Munoz (if het defeats Weidman) would be a good option. The guy is a good wrestler but also has the power to knock everybody out. Silva would be a huge favorite offcourse, but it would still be a decent title fight. I think Silva has fought some 'lesser guys' then him (Leites, Irvin, Cote come to mind). After that... maybe go for the Jones vs Silva superfight.

Other thoughts on UFC 148:

-I love Demian Maia. His win was a bit strange but he was classy in not throwing punches on the defenseless Kim before the referee even stopped the fight. His speech was nice too, he looked very happy and eager to fight... much better then in his last fights. I allready had the feeling that he would quit one of these days as his fighting spirit seemed gone.

- Griffin vs Ortiz was a great match. And for some strange reason, I didn't dislike Forrest's aftermatch behaviour. Yeah, the guy is crazy but he's fighting other dudes in a cage. Being a bit crazy helps, I think.

- Disappointed in Menjivar. His last fight was great, this one wasn't. Back to the drawing board.

Also... I said it before but... Las Vegas fans suck. They booed during the Menjivar-Easton match, they booed Griffin during his interview, they booed and booed and... . UFC must give some of these tickets for free as the people that get them obviously don't like mma. I guess they want to see some bloody gladiatoresque murder spectacle or something... At least they were great during the Griffin vs Ortiz-match and ok during Sonnen vs Silva. But still... if this had happened in Brazil, the fans would've gone crazy during the whole show.

[Benjamin]

I didn't really understand the anger at Forrest for the conducting the interview himself. I thought it was funny and entertaining. The Vegas fans booing was so bloody strange.

Now, the walking out, I didn't like. Thought it was disrespectful to Tito. But the interview was fine. Even Rogan didn't seem bothered by it, Ortiz was visibly upset, though, but since it didn't cause any harm I didn't see what was so bad about it.

Also, I like how Tito was so adamant that he thought he won the fight that he even dissed Karyn Bryant about it. No way in hell he won, though.

[Liam]

C'mon man, Sonnen was so entertaining he even won a PRO WRESTLING award for best interviews!

This would be the pro wrestling awards that has a bunch of MMA exclusive awards and has been including MMA fighters and promotions in its other categories for about ten years?

Yes, but it's impressive though, and weird. Pro wrestlers should win that award every year.

Impressive? No.

Weird? No.

Of course it is. In MMA, you're not trained to give great interviews, that's why it's impressive. And as I wrote before, pro wrestling should be winning that.

No, it's not impressive because nobody cares about those awards, least of all Chael Sonnen or the UFC.

Also, I know this is me simply speaking in hindsight, but Fedor definitely is not in the same class as Silva. I'd even put GSP ahead of Fedor in the best of discussion, and maybe even BJ and if he hadn't lost to Shields maybe even Hendo.

Also, isn't Silva older than Fedor?

Good one....I needed a bit of a laugh.

[Dingle]

BJ at some points did seem like he was absolutely unstoppable, but I'm not sure I ever felt like he was a thousand leagues above the division like Fedor has been promoted as, and Silva certainly is.

[Cactus Drags]

Hated how that ended. I've never liked Silva anyway, but the Vaseline trick, the shorts holding, and aiming a knee at the head of a downed opponent? Best fighter in the world shouldn't need stunts like that.

The knee hit him in the chest though. Doesn't really matter where he aimed it, it is where it hit that matters.

As for the other things, multiple fighters do both, or commit other 'fouls' (grabbing the cage being a favourite). It happens.

It does when I'm calling him a no-good piece of shit. And again, the best in the world shouldn;t have to resort to that stuff. And it'd be nice if he ever got called on it.

[Rafael]

Now I realize how good Sonnen is at promoting fights. He managed to put a whole country ( I mean, people that didn't even know what MMA was before that fight ) against him, and is still being talked about the whole country until today . Even the goddamn president asked Anderson to beat the hell out of him.

Edited July 9, 2012 by RafaelFms

[Liam]

Hated how that ended. I've never liked Silva anyway, but the Vaseline trick, the shorts holding, and aiming a knee at the head of a downed opponent? Best fighter in the world shouldn't need stunts like that.

The knee hit him in the chest though. Doesn't really matter where he aimed it, it is where it hit that matters.

As for the other things, multiple fighters do both, or commit other 'fouls' (grabbing the cage being a favourite). It happens.

It does when I'm calling him a no-good piece of shit. And again, the best in the world shouldn;t have to resort to that stuff. And it'd be nice if he ever got called on it.

Of course it does. You think he aimed it at the head, it hit him in the chest. You are second guessing what he tried to do. Also, Sonnen came out and said the knee wasn't an issue, and that Sonnen himself grabbed the shorts during a fight. Doesn't make it any better in your eyes, but it says a lot about it.

Silva also gets called on a tonne of shit.....go elsewhere on the internet, and enough people aren't Silva fans for what he has done. However, he is the best in the world, without question and without parallel really.