Anderson Silva has been getting away with this crap for years, and now he’s finally paid for it with his title.
Somebody other than Anderson Silva possesses the UFC middleweight belt for the first time since 2006.
And Silva has only himself to blame.
Chris Weidman took advantage of some of Silva’s usual showboating early in the second round to knock out the longtime champ. A left hook to the chin of a lackadaisical Silva dropped him and a few moments (and a few more Weidman punches later), the fight was halted.
“We expected him to do things like that,” Weidman said. “He’s done it plenty of times in a lot of fights. I don’t see him as being cocky. He’s trying to mentally defeat you in there. It got to the point when he was doing it, ‘You know what? Screw this. I’m hitting him.’”
Silva’s never shied away from showboating, especially as he ruled the middleweight division where he successfully defended the belt a UFC record 10 times.
You have to respect these MMA fighters, but you also have to wonder how much damage a real boxer could do to these guys if he could learn to handle the other fight aspects. Silva’s sloppiness is shocking and it was just a matter of time before someone clocked him good.
