Anderson Silva Has Very Little Shame

Thank you Luke. You nailed it.

However, let’s not confuse what he did last night with his ability as a fighter. Criticize his effort, but let’s not question his P4P status. Leites was a guy that put up one hell of a fight against Marquardt but last night looked like a little child fighting in an adult sport.
 
AS could have finished him many times but didn’t. He should have engaged but didn’t. It was a craptacular effort, but nothing in it indicates that he’s lost any of his incredible fighting ability. He still looked like he’s several notches above anybody the UFC could throw at him. Perhaps that’s his problem. If he was a step slower, a little less accurate, a lot less fearsome, perhaps last night’s fight could have been entertaining. Too bad.

Blame him for his reluctance to engage, but I can’t fault him for his skills.

Maybe change the title to Anderson Silva and Thales Leites have very little shame.

& great command of the English language. I had to look up ‘obfuscation’.

Your post is spot on. I remember after watching Leites pull guard for the umpteenth time, I said out loud, “For god’s sake, finish him! He’s begging for it! He’s got nothing!” I just didn’t understand what I was seeing. I don’t know what Silva is trying to pull, but it’s so frustrating. I thought the Cote fight was offensive, but I was wrong. THIS fight was offensive. Something is rotten in Denmark.

“I don’t know if Silva is simply uninterested in fighting MMA anymore or whether he’s still pining after a boxing match with Roy Jones, Jr.”

He is uninterested in fighting MMA any more, and he told us as much though nobody really recognized it as such, as I discussed in my FanPost here.

I couldn’t have worded this any better. I can’t believe this fight is as polarizing as it is. It seems so many “hardcore” fans want to demonstrate how enlightened they are about the sport that they are ready to coronate Anderson king of a new brilliant kind of fighting, when in reality what he did was incredibly unprofessional, boring, and antithetical to every reasonable expectation placed upon him.

I was a HUGE Anderson Silva fan before this fight; even through the Cote fight. But after last night’s performance I have lost a serious amount of respect for the man. Playing the prima donna role for 25 minutes expecting us to shell out our hard-earned money to watch that personal ego trip is more vanity than I can tolerate out of my champions, thank you very much.

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this today or not, but I thought that the championship fight was shitty.

He chose to childishly throw absurd and positively perfunctory kicks to Leites’s knees

Dude, if you think those straight kicks to the knee were “Absurd,” then i’d entreat you to eat 20+ of those kicks right to your knee joint. Silva’s a southpaw, Leites is orthodox; we’ve seen good strikers in the same position throw the same shot (ie Vera vs. Jardine). If it landed right, I bet it could tear an ACl/ MCL, and do some real damage.

Also, Silva has always been known to have a lengthy feeling out process with his opponent, in which he invites them to throw whatever they have at him (so that he can get a sense of their timing), and then he used sharp counters and creative combos to finish/ damage his opponents. However, he can’t do that if his opponent refuses to engage. IMO, Leites chose to butt scoot and flop on his back in order to avoid an embarassing KO loss.

Could Anderson have engaged more? Sure. Was the fight a snooz fest? Absolutely. But at any rate, Anderson took no damage whatsoever, and busted Thales up. You can’t fault a guy like Anderson (or Machida, etc) for dominating an opponent.

I have the card on my DVR. I will not watch that garbage again. More power to ya Luke for watching it over I know you had to so you could write this up. Plain and simple I was disgusted with Silva last night. I cut him some slack in the Cote fight but last night was probably, no make that THE worst title fight I’ve ever seen.

Nice work on this, Rec’d!

everyround i said this is it…hes done..hes got him…any second now….man that fight sucked. i honestly believe that he couldve finished that fight anytime between the 3rd and 5th round…but he wouldnt do it..yea those front knee kicks were brutal but dam quit fuckin around. at one point he had him on the ground in leites gaurd late in the fight and if he wouldve just threw ten more punches it wouldve been over. but no just got up and got back to dickin around. give him to wanderlei or rampage!

The more I think about last night’s fight, the more I think that it’s Leites who will suffer the most from the lackluster main event. True, as Luke Thomas points out, Silva bears the greater responsibility considering he has a world of skill and is far and away the top dog in that division, but it’s Leites who will be kicking himself years from now. What I saw last night in Leites was a fighter that genuinely competed through the first two rounds. Early in the third, however, he mentally folded when it began to become clear what the inevitable outcome would be. Listen, I’m all for guys sticking to a gameplan for as long as possible and being patient. However, when it becomes evident to everyone in the building that a strategy has failed, a fighter who has a golden opportunity in front of them owes it to himself to go all out and throw the kitchen sink at his opponent. Again, both guys should apologize to the fans for their effort (especially Silva). But Silva will have future opportunities to make it right. He’ll main event a major pay-per-view again this year and get another chance to show that he’s the world’s best. If Leties has any pride, he’ll never forgive himself. Most fighters go their entire career and never get a shot at being the world’s best in their weight class. Still more rare is a second such opportunity. I doubt Leites will ever get another. And that is the shame. To me, he’s that guy in the office that has potential to get promoted and advance, but always declines because he’s afraid to fail. That’s what he was in the cage last night. He failed himself by mentally folding early and going into survival mode for the rest of the match. I’ll bet anything that the regret he’ll feel in the coming years when he remembers that fight as he puts his head down on his pillow at nigth will hurt him more than any knockout shot from Silva ever would have. He probably wouldn’t have won anyway, but if he had left no bullets in the gun, he could have been at peace with the fact that he gave it all he had in his big moment on the world stage. Everyone keeps saying “Leties is who he thought he was.” But while I agree that we knew that he didn’t have the skill of Silva, I had no idea that he had such little heart. Maybe he can take solace in the fact that guys the world over that are fearful of taking chances and avoid them like the plague have finally found a fighter that they can identify with.

….and his fights w/ Hoger, Kaz, and David Heath. Machida, who is obviously more skilled than those fighters used his counter punching style to avoid all damage and won a decision. Silva’s fight was even worse because he had an opponent who was totally unwilling to engage.

Amateurs that pull guard then get TKOed aren’t usually world class BJJ practitioners. Silva was fighting a smart fight. However, I do think your argument has validity in that Anderson IS holding back to somehow protest some beef he has w/ the UFC.

Anyone else want to see GSP eat Anderson Silva’s lunch? At least GSP show up and takes his opponents seriously. Right now it would be pretty glorious to see Anderson get ground down a la BJ Penn.

PS. Will Zombie Strippers be liveblogged tonight?

start to think “man…the only attempt to finish the fight by Anderson is those kicks…is he trying to blow out another guy’s knee?” Those are injury kicks, much different from the typical leg kick, they’re meant to blow up a guy’s knee.

Before someone pulls out the “it’s the point of a fight to hurt the other guy” let me just say that I’m not faulting him for the kicks. I just got the impression that he may have been trying to see if he could blow up another guy’s knee

I was a Silva fan until last night, what a terrible display. I can appreciate (didn’t say I liked) Machida’s elusiveness but this was just a shameful display of unwillingness to fight, as much on Silvas part as Leites in my opinion.
I really think it’s Silva trying to ‘throw a fit’ or complain about not being able to fight Boxing ala Roy Jones Jr. Ever since that storyline was kyboshed Silva hasn’t really been himself.
At this point Silva reminds me of Arlovski now, except the UFC doesn’t have an anti-Silva like Arlovski had with Silvia where they could remove him as champion.
I seriously hope they throw him in the deep end in the 205 division, murderers row and tell him to sink or swim.

If I sit down and think of some of my favorite fighters, the ones I enjoy watching the most and think of them put in Silva’s position like last night I can’t think of a single one that would have let Leites out of the 3rd + round like that. Leites was begging to be finished and Silva refused to.

97 had the worst main event in a LONG time.

All of this complaining would be a lot more meaningful if somebody had in mind a fighter who could beat Silva in the UFC.

I liked his performance and was mostly disgusted at Dana White and Joe Silva for putting this fight together.

Silva’s performance was disappointing indeed, but he should not be held to a higher standard than his opponent— regardless of who it is. Both fighters earned their way to the top, and both ought to be required to justify keeping their place inside the Octagon.

Unfortunately, one means by which a fighter substantiates his place at the apex of MMA is by catering to his audience. Perhaps too often the entertainment factor conflicts with a fighter’s strategy. True, Silva has an enviable set of tools, but who’s to say he has to use them? As a Spider fan of epic proportions, I was both frustrated and, frankly, bored by his lackluster performance. But he won employing one of the most efficient tools in the box: strategy. With the belt on the line, why risk using the drill, when you’re comfortable with the screwdriver?

MMA is a “for-profit” sport intended first and foremost to entertain. Putting on a show (a la WWE) has the potential to limit and, in some cases, delegitimize the athletic performance—and intelligence—of the contenders. If this were merely a “sport for the sake of sport,” a referee would not, for example, be pressured to stand opponents engaged in the ground game on account of hissing and booing.

In essence— Anderson Silva and Thales Leites were sportsmen, not actors. For this reason, they should be lauded. While it’s true neither “fought” for the belt with fervor, both cast a scheme for it— and to put it bluntly, these fellas are not, and nor should they be vying for an Oscar.