With a jaw dropping, rip-roaring performance at UFC 101, Anderson Silva placed himself in a pantheon of sporting greats whose finest performances in their era of dominance wowed and amazed the world. It was spectacularly magnificent.
Only 224 days had passed since Forrest Griffin held the UFC Light-Heavyweight championship of the world. While Silva himself is a belt holder, he was coming up a weight division to face a world champion calibre athlete who reportedly cuts from heavyweight proportions. Yet despite sound logic pointing to a close and even fight, given Anderson’s pedigree and Griffin’s lack of vicious knockout power, The Spider delivered an artistic and humbling display that included three knockdowns, a hands down Silva stance, disdainful punch evasion bordering on poetry in motion, and climaxed with the outclassed Forrest slumping to the mat unconscious after a deft counter punch, a right handed jab by the back-peddling Brazilian. Yes, he was moving backwards.
As a writer, it is hard to avoid grandiloquence when discussing Anderson Silva in the second half of his career. Even more so, given that I was not personally a fan until his display at the one hundred and first numbered Ultimate Fighting Championship event. As an unashamed Frank Shamrock super-fan, I was dismayed when the new kid on the block surpassed ‘The Legend’s’ record five UFC Middleweight title fight victories in April, with his lacklustre defence against Thales Leites at UFC 97. What was worse was the tepid pace of the fight; in winning to a chorus of boos, Anderson merely gave supporters of the imperious Fedor Emelianenko or the king of the welterweights, Georges St. Pierre, more wood to throw on the ever burning fire of The Great Lb 4 Lb Debate. But in his humiliating destruction of an elite fighter who competes at a weight twenty pounds heavier, The Spider arguably silenced all doubters among those who see lb 4 lb as a legitimate exercise in judging fighters of the time. It would be the equivalent of seeing GSP go up to middleweight and not only beat, but also clown Dan Henderson or Rich Franklin and knock out one of the former UFC and Pride champions respectively within three and a half minutes. It was the equivalent of Lyoto Machida facing former Heavyweight king and recent Interim Champion Frank Mir at a 235lbs catchweight, and doing the same. It is frightening to think what Anderson Silva can further achieve in the Octagon.
Anderson broke another record against Leites at UFC 97. He won his ninth consecutive UFC fight, an unmatched feat, which he followed up with his outstanding dissection of Forrest for a 10-0 record of perfection. It made me remember Frank Shamrock, in the wake of his own glorious victory over Tito Ortiz in a defence of the old 199lbs title. Back then in 1999, Frank claimed that monetary rewards in MMA were not enough for the risks they take, and he told UFC to call him when they had a middleweight (now Light-Heavyweight) who could beat him. Sadly, Frank never did return, but that was an occurring theme with dominant fighters, or those on the verge of dominance. I realised that Anderson alone has the potential to truly make a decade his own, so that nostalgic fans look back and remember a years-long period as ‘The Silva Era.’
In this, it is true Anderson has his rivals in that capacity. Friend and sparring partner Lyoto Machida looks truly daunting at the top of the light-heavyweight pile, he himself on a 7-0 UFC tear, and of course GSP at welterweight is carving his own legend. With Machida the only impediment in Anderson Being All That He Can Be at 205lbs, one wishes that the two fall out bitterly in order to see a dream fight to make fight fans salivate. But while the other two are, like Silva, head and shoulders above the rest of their weight class, of the three only Anderson has stepped up a weight and made an elite fighter and consensus top 4 warrior who recently held the big belt, look like an amateurish tomato can in comparison. The Spider is surely only a few more similar displays from surpassing the fighters from UFC history who have looked poised to make a whole era truly theirs, unshared and exclusive, only to fall at the final hurdle.
The first ever was Royce Gracie. In beating Art Jimmerson, a green Ken Shamrock and Gerard Gordeau to win the UFC 1 tournament, he cemented his legend. He followed it up by handily winning UFC’s 2 and 4. But after meeting former foe, rival Ken Shamrock who was now reigning King of Pancrase and MMA tournament winner in his own right, and surviving a 36 minute time limit to earn a ‘draw’, Royce left the UFC with an 11-1-1 slate. He would not return for eleven years, for a one-off match with welterweight ruler Matt Hughes. Though Royce was the undoubted king of UFC in 1993 and 1994, his abrupt departure left unanswered questions (does Shamrock have his number? Are fighters learning how to beat him?), and Gracie sacrificed the chance to maybe establish himself forevermore as the most dominant fighter the UFC will ever know. As fantastic as his record and achievements are, the latter plaudit will now probably never be the case.
The second was Ken Shamrock. After going 1-1 at UFC 1, and being introduced to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the harshest way, Ken fought a further 8 times in UFC in the 90s, matches that carved his legend. His form on paper in that post-UFC 1 period would be 5-1-2, but only on paper, effectively 7-1 in reality. The two ‘draws’ were due to special time limits introduced, and with no judges to award him his win, Ken’s winning record suffered. And the sole loss was ironically by split judges’ decision, in an incredibly even and equally boring rematch with Dan Severn, whom Ken had defeated to become champion.
Out of the men who had best chance to make an era their own, Ken perhaps had the best chance, which he arguably squandered. The single loss from eight high profile fights, including five title fights, should have been followed up on. He won two fights at the crazy, infamous UFC 3, but after Gracie forfeited his own semi-final, Ken refused to fight in the final and risk worsening his knee injury with no loss to avenge. He won a tournament and became a reigning champion in Japanese org Pancrase, which came in useful as a bargaining chip for a special UFC ‘Superfight’ with Royce. After that inconclusive outcome (which Ken saw as a moral victory, a win on all but paper) Ken remained in the Superfight slot, which became a means of having a reigning UFC openweight champion that the one-night tournament winners could face. Ken faced UFC 5 champion Dan Severn, whom he guillotine choked to submission in two minutes. He defended the belt in his second Superfight ‘draw’ against UFC 6 tournament winner and stable-mate Oleg Taktarov, and then beat Kimo Leopoldo more conclusively with a kneebar at UFC 8. Then in his fifth Superfight, things went wrong for Shamrock. After a thirty minute circling staredown, Severn was given the newly instated judges’ nod in his hometown. Ken fought once more in early UFC, giving his most explosive performance in a Ground and Pound massacre of Brian Johnston, but unfortunately broke his hand and had to withdraw from the tournament. With his contract in both UFC and Pancrase at an end, and the need to find a more lucrative career to fund his Lion’s Den fight team; given that MMA was increasingly being forced under the radar by politicians, Ken left the sport at his physical and fighting peak. Despite his later return, Shamrock could not compete with the younger champions of the day, and to date his record since 2000 is 4 wins and 8 losses.
Mark Coleman trained with Ken and the Lion’s Den, and later joined him in the UFC Hall of Fame. He burst onto the scene winning the UFC 10 and 11 tournaments using wrestling and formidable Ground and Pound, and as weight classes were introduced to the UFC, kept Shamrock’s title lineage going with a Superfight victory over Dan Severn that passed the torch to the official first UFC Heavyweight champion. In only six consecutive fights, The Hammer had claimed three separate UFC championship honours.
Yet that was as good as it got, at least in the UFC for Coleman. Losing to Maurice Smith (another Lion’s Den fighter) in his first defence, he went on to another three successive losses, including becoming a famous highlight reel KO to Pete Williams (yet another Lion’s Den fighter). Though Coleman went to Pride FC in Japan to win their openweight Grand Prix in 2000, his early UFC dominance was truly shattered as his suspect cardio was brought to harsh light.
Frank Shamrock left Pancrase for unified rules MMA, and after a debut loss to John Lober in Hawaii, he would post an undefeated 11-0-1 in a decade. More impressively, that included a 5-0 streak in UFC Middleweight (199lbs) title fights from 97-99, and he is credited with continuing his brothers’ noble work and becoming the prototypical Mixed Martial Artist that we know today. Frank defeated Olympic gold medallist and UFC tournament winner Kevin Jackson by submission in 14 seconds to win the belt, avenged his loss to Lober, beat Extreme Fighting champion Igor Zinoviev with a career ending slam, defeated MMA legend Jeremy Horn, and then capped it all off with a win over future 205lbs champion Tito Ortiz in what is the consensus greatest UFC title fight of all time. Then… he left the sport. Sporadic comeback matches eventually led to a return to the now mainstream MMA with Strikeforce, but a late career ledger of 1 win and 3 losses has tarnished somewhat his near flawless record. Worse, including Pancrase his career totals 23-10-2, an impressive yet somewhat mixed fight history that is less telling than the unified rules breakdown of 11-1-1 and 1-3 is to his overall contribution to and greatness in modern unified rules Mixed Martial Arts.
Tito Ortiz rebounded from the Frank Shamrock loss to defeat future legend Wanderlei Silva for the middleweight strap in 2000. Renamed the Light-Heavyweight title during his tenure, Tito’s five successful defences have yet to be matched, and his reign was MMA’s biggest trump card during the ‘dark ages’, when the sport was forced underground. His huge win over Ken Shamrock at UFC 40 galvanised the sport and put it back on the map, to the point where it now has boxing on the back foot after seven years riding the crest of a huge wave of popularity. However, the ‘mainstream era’ post Tito/Ken saw Ortiz lose his beloved strap to Randy Couture in 2003, then get TKO’d savagely by Chuck Liddell. Though he was a dominant champion for a time, with six successive championship victories, the American masses and new-age fans saw him gradually relegated from champion, to consensus top 3, to gatekeeper status. Randy and Chuck dished out humbling defeats that Tito never recovered from, and save for two more pointless wins over the shell of Kenneth Wayne Shamrock, and a fine defeat of Vitor Belfort, Ortiz never came close to recovering the belt that defined his career. His only shot at it came in 2006 against the formidable Chuck, himself a reigning champion, and once again he suffered a TKO defeat. His final two UFC fights after this saw him as a true gatekeeper, a mere obstacle in the respective paths of Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida to the 205lbs crown. Evans escaped with a draw after Tito was deducted a point for fence grabbing, and went on to win the belt anyway. Lyoto Machida earned a unanimous decision over the fallen former king, though Tito almost locked in a triangle choke in the final round. Tito’s contract expired directly after this, and though he would return to the UFC after a year on the sidelines, the ‘Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ does not look like he can reclaim the title he once held dear.
And so to Anderson ‘The Spider’ Silva. Only four days after Ortiz recorded his last win to date, a useless UFC farewell to a shadow of Ken Shamrock, Silva won the UFC Middleweight Championship. It took him only three minutes to defeat the capable Rich Franklin, a feat he repeated at UFC 77 earning Knockout of the Night honours to boot. Nate Marquardt, Travis Lutter, Chris Leben, Patrick Côté, Thales Leites, James Irvin, two-weight Pride FC champion Dan Henderson and UFC Light-Heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin would join his list of victims, a list that looks to keep growing. After three dominant years, Silva is the longest reigning current champion, has the record for most consecutive UFC wins, the most middleweight title victories, and will soon be the longest reigning UFC champion ever.
As fight fans reminisce, they will talk about the Gracie days of 93-94, the Shamrock superfights of 95-96, the legendary late 96 that Mark Coleman had, the 5-0 forged by Frank Shamrock that gave a glimpse to the archetypal fighter of the future, and the 2000-2003 Tito title reign that carried the UFC through Mixed Martial Arts’ darkest days. But with his ten victories, athletic pedigree and the potentially unrivalled fighting ability that the current pride of Brazil has, how much longer can Anderson reign at middleweight for? Will he ever make a run for the Light-Heavyweight title? What more can he achieve? Will rumours of a match with former heavyweight king Mir come to fruition? And will this supremely gifted gladiator be the first fighter to actually grab an entire time period within fight-sport exclusively, so that from October 14th 2006 to whenever Silva decides to hang up his gloves will forever be known as The Spider’s Era. I lived through the Anderson years.
Fletch
