basblue
29-08-2011, 21:33
Anderson Silva: The Best Ever
By Jon Hartley on August 28, 2011
Predictably enough, a violent sport like mixed martial arts attracts some pretty volatile, passionate fans. That’s great in most cases, and part of the reason that the sport has survived is because of MMA nerds like myself who followed along on the internet, ordered DVDs (and videotapes!) to discover little-known fighters in backwater promotions and argued on internet forums while the sport was in its lean years.
However, the side effect of all of this passion and volatility is that you will never make any kind of headway with some folks. Never-ending debates like whether Pride was better than the UFC ten years ago or how Fedor Emelianenko’s career should be viewed end up becoming pissing contests between fans who don’t want to let go of a bygone era and those who just recently started watching and resent the lack of respect that they get from longtime followers of the sport. So you get some people who will tell you that Fedor could have reached into Brock Lesnar’s rib cage and pulled out his heart with his bare hands, while others will say that Fedor couldn’t even amass a winning record in today’s UFC heavyweight division, while the reality is always somewhere in the middle.
What I’m getting at is this: you either are open to challenging what you think you already knew, or you simply aren’t. If you named your first-born son Fedor and you sign up for multiple Twitter accounts just to cuss out Dana White for closing down Pride’s doors, I don’t expect you to ever see that Anderson Silva could and should be known as the greatest ever, because you just aren’t going to let that happen. Hey, that’s your thing, right? However, when Anderson Silva keeps front-kicking former champions in the face and making elite fighters look like $100/week sparring partners, it is going to be harder and harder for you to stubbornly stick to those guns, my friend.
Now, before any hardcore Fedor Emelianenko fans call for my head, let me remind you that my saying something in a column does not make it irrefutable fact. This is particularly true when speaking on a very subjective topic, such as the greatest athlete in a specific sport.
Having said that, it is clear to me now that Anderson Silva is the best mixed martial arts fighter of all-time.
Before anyone even says the words “Demian Maia”, “Thales Leites” or “Patrick Cote”, let’s just establish that those fights went down the way that they did because of Silva’s own choosing. I will never know why Silva decided to not engage opponents that presented such a small danger to him; I do know that his explanations in post-fight interviews were flimsy, at best. At this point, though, it doesn’t matter. If you can say with complete honesty that you think that Silva couldn’t have finished any of those three just as convincingly as he did Yushin Okami last night had he wanted to, then you probably need to start watching Anderson’s fights with your eyes open.
This is not a guy who clinically and efficiently wins round after round, as Georges St. Pierre does. This is a guy who takes top-level challengers and toys with them. This is a guy who breaks fighters spirits- and not just any fighters, but hungry, determined, blood-and-guts fighters like Okami and Forrest Griffin.
His win streak of 15 straight fights may not be close to Fedor’s streak of 27 wins, but I would argue that Silva’s has been more impressive, as 14 of those came in the UFC. You can mock Travis Lutter or Thales Leites all you want, but Silva did not fight any Hong Man Chois or Yuji Nagatas in his streak. Dana White didn’t give him any Mihail Apostolovs or Lee Hasdells. Not even a Chris Haseman.
I’m not going to go all sabermetrics on you and compare opponents’ win-loss records or anything, but let me say that I know what most will argue when it comes to whether Silva is the best of all-time: the perceived lack of talent in the middleweight division. And let me tell you, anyone who says that the heavyweight division was any better in Fedor’s most dominant years (from 2002-06) is crazy.
When you look at the way that each man won, too, Anderson stands out. Again, besides Chael Sonnen, no one has given this man a competitive fight in nearly seven years. Fedor defined himself in gutsy showings like the one against the underrated Kazuyuki Fujita, who rocked him early on but still found himself tapping to a rear naked choke expertly applied by a bloodied Emelianenko minutes later, or the one against Kevin Randleman, who slammed him in such a way that I still cringe watching it (while wondering how Fedor’s neck wasn’t broken), yet ended up tapping just the same a couple of minutes after.
Now, you can’t say anything these days without people misinterpreting your words, and allow me to say that I am in no way crapping on Fedor’s legacy, here. I respect the man immensely; but you don’t argue that someone was the best of all time by shrugging your shoulders and saying “well, they were both so good, but…” No. Fedor has been amazing, and he will forever be an all-time great, but I’ve never seen him do the kinds of things in the ring or cage that Silva has shown me over the years. Besides, being the second best fighter ever is pretty impressive too, right?
Silva has only been limited by how good he wants to be. Like all geniuses, he struggles more with his own desires and motivations than with any actual opponent or challenge. I’ll never understand why he decided to grant Cote, Leites or Maia a reprieve from the vicious, violent fate that Okami met on Saturday night.
At the same time, though, I’m also not going to pretend the man isn’t the best fighter I’ve ever seen simply because he loses it now and then and pretends he’s on “Dancing With the Stars”.
Anderson Silva is the greatest ever.
All you have to do is open your eyes to see it.
By Jon Hartley on August 28, 2011
Predictably enough, a violent sport like mixed martial arts attracts some pretty volatile, passionate fans. That’s great in most cases, and part of the reason that the sport has survived is because of MMA nerds like myself who followed along on the internet, ordered DVDs (and videotapes!) to discover little-known fighters in backwater promotions and argued on internet forums while the sport was in its lean years.
However, the side effect of all of this passion and volatility is that you will never make any kind of headway with some folks. Never-ending debates like whether Pride was better than the UFC ten years ago or how Fedor Emelianenko’s career should be viewed end up becoming pissing contests between fans who don’t want to let go of a bygone era and those who just recently started watching and resent the lack of respect that they get from longtime followers of the sport. So you get some people who will tell you that Fedor could have reached into Brock Lesnar’s rib cage and pulled out his heart with his bare hands, while others will say that Fedor couldn’t even amass a winning record in today’s UFC heavyweight division, while the reality is always somewhere in the middle.
What I’m getting at is this: you either are open to challenging what you think you already knew, or you simply aren’t. If you named your first-born son Fedor and you sign up for multiple Twitter accounts just to cuss out Dana White for closing down Pride’s doors, I don’t expect you to ever see that Anderson Silva could and should be known as the greatest ever, because you just aren’t going to let that happen. Hey, that’s your thing, right? However, when Anderson Silva keeps front-kicking former champions in the face and making elite fighters look like $100/week sparring partners, it is going to be harder and harder for you to stubbornly stick to those guns, my friend.
Now, before any hardcore Fedor Emelianenko fans call for my head, let me remind you that my saying something in a column does not make it irrefutable fact. This is particularly true when speaking on a very subjective topic, such as the greatest athlete in a specific sport.
Having said that, it is clear to me now that Anderson Silva is the best mixed martial arts fighter of all-time.
Before anyone even says the words “Demian Maia”, “Thales Leites” or “Patrick Cote”, let’s just establish that those fights went down the way that they did because of Silva’s own choosing. I will never know why Silva decided to not engage opponents that presented such a small danger to him; I do know that his explanations in post-fight interviews were flimsy, at best. At this point, though, it doesn’t matter. If you can say with complete honesty that you think that Silva couldn’t have finished any of those three just as convincingly as he did Yushin Okami last night had he wanted to, then you probably need to start watching Anderson’s fights with your eyes open.
This is not a guy who clinically and efficiently wins round after round, as Georges St. Pierre does. This is a guy who takes top-level challengers and toys with them. This is a guy who breaks fighters spirits- and not just any fighters, but hungry, determined, blood-and-guts fighters like Okami and Forrest Griffin.
His win streak of 15 straight fights may not be close to Fedor’s streak of 27 wins, but I would argue that Silva’s has been more impressive, as 14 of those came in the UFC. You can mock Travis Lutter or Thales Leites all you want, but Silva did not fight any Hong Man Chois or Yuji Nagatas in his streak. Dana White didn’t give him any Mihail Apostolovs or Lee Hasdells. Not even a Chris Haseman.
I’m not going to go all sabermetrics on you and compare opponents’ win-loss records or anything, but let me say that I know what most will argue when it comes to whether Silva is the best of all-time: the perceived lack of talent in the middleweight division. And let me tell you, anyone who says that the heavyweight division was any better in Fedor’s most dominant years (from 2002-06) is crazy.
When you look at the way that each man won, too, Anderson stands out. Again, besides Chael Sonnen, no one has given this man a competitive fight in nearly seven years. Fedor defined himself in gutsy showings like the one against the underrated Kazuyuki Fujita, who rocked him early on but still found himself tapping to a rear naked choke expertly applied by a bloodied Emelianenko minutes later, or the one against Kevin Randleman, who slammed him in such a way that I still cringe watching it (while wondering how Fedor’s neck wasn’t broken), yet ended up tapping just the same a couple of minutes after.
Now, you can’t say anything these days without people misinterpreting your words, and allow me to say that I am in no way crapping on Fedor’s legacy, here. I respect the man immensely; but you don’t argue that someone was the best of all time by shrugging your shoulders and saying “well, they were both so good, but…” No. Fedor has been amazing, and he will forever be an all-time great, but I’ve never seen him do the kinds of things in the ring or cage that Silva has shown me over the years. Besides, being the second best fighter ever is pretty impressive too, right?
Silva has only been limited by how good he wants to be. Like all geniuses, he struggles more with his own desires and motivations than with any actual opponent or challenge. I’ll never understand why he decided to grant Cote, Leites or Maia a reprieve from the vicious, violent fate that Okami met on Saturday night.
At the same time, though, I’m also not going to pretend the man isn’t the best fighter I’ve ever seen simply because he loses it now and then and pretends he’s on “Dancing With the Stars”.
Anderson Silva is the greatest ever.
All you have to do is open your eyes to see it.