The most action we saw in the first 14 minutes of the Anderson Silva-Thales Leites main event at UFC 97 was when the two middleweights touched gloves before the start of each round.If any of you remember back in 1998-2000 when Roy Jones jrs speed, reflexes and athleticism put him in a different category than his opponents, each fight, from Lou Del Valle in 1998 to David Telesco in 2000 was Roy facing mediocre, decent, 'nothing really special' types of fighters, one would assume that such a lopsided fight would produce an exciting, skillful, entertaining boxing match, but like most of you know, these fights were for the lack of a better word, boring, throughout the fights he would show glimpses of his superior skills and athelticism, short bursts, a flurry here a flurry there, but that was it, after these short revelations of his almost inhuman hand speed Roy would slink off into a defensive, inactive, "I am bored" mode, earning him titles such as "reluctant Roy."With one minute left in the third, we saw Silva come with a flying knee. The rest of the time we saw very little, unless you count Leites dropping the mat every 14 seconds to try and pull guard "action."
Seriously, we've seen better fights in the parking lot at the Meadowlands between Jets fans after the Jets won a game.
So boring was this fight, at the two-minute mark of the third round, the Bell Centre crowd started a "GSP" chant. Georges St-PIerre, Montreal's favorite son and a guest in the crowd. Not even on the fight card.
Enter Anderson Silva, current UFC middle weight champ, who also possess the same skill and athleticism as Roy, and also similar to Roy, Silvas' last 2 fights have been snooze fests, like Roy he posses the same qualities to make his lopsided fights entertaining, skillful and exciting and just like Roy, Silva slinks off into a defensive, inactive, "I am bored mode." Now Silva has yet to earn a title I am aware of, but from the way things look I won't be surprised to see a couple of titles floating around like "Apathetic Anderson," or "Spiritless Silva," or "play it safe silva."
Like Roy, Silva should be taking advantage of these lopsided matches to put on a show, do something memorable, like an off the cage sisscor kick or something, but I think like Roy, Silva is reluctant to engage for fear of the underdog getting a lucky shot or a lukcy K.O. and being a fighter myself I can kind've sympothize with that, and the blame can't fall soley on Silva or Roy, as the promotors should be doing a good job in reconginzing how their fighters respond. If their fighters don't want to fight mediocre opponents for fear of getting knocked out by a lucky punch, the promoters should find more skilled opponenents, but therein lies the problem, Silva, like Roy, beat the most skilled opponenets in his weight division, so there's really nothing left, but this circles back to the fighter again, either take advantage of the mediocre opponenents or play it safe, in Silvas case it looks like the UFC is doing a better job at keeping their fighters competing at the top level as there are talks of Anderson Silva fighting George St. Pierre.
Dana White recently said in an interview that if Georges St.-Pierre is able to defeat B.J. Penn at UFC 94, he will then set up a fight between the number one welterweight St. Pierre and number one middleweight Anderson Silva.[34] St.-Pierre did defeat B.J. Penn, so it remains to be seen whether St.-Pierre will be matched up against Silva after their respective fights with Thales Leites and Thiago Alves.Let us hope that Silva learns from Roy and doesn't play around with his weight too much, since Roys career started to decline after started jumping weight classes.
On a some what similar note Anderson and Roy both expressed fighting each other.
Following his win over Dan Henderson, in an interview with MMA Weekly, Anderson Silva's manager stated: "Anderson would love to fight Roy Jones Jr. in a boxing match up under boxing rules to prove that MMA fighters are technical, too."[35] UFC president, Dana White, later expressed that he would use his veto power to stop such a match from taking place.[36] Anderson, however, has commented: "After my contract with the UFC is finished, I will set up the fight with Jones Jr. The fight has already been permitted by Jones himself." In April 2009, Jones himself confirmed he is still interested in fighting Silva: "I'm going to try and make it happen. He's saying he wants to fight me, so, OK, I'm ready. Let's brawl." Silva, when he was fighting in PRIDE, had promoted himself as "the Roy Jones Jr. of MMA." He even said he has a good chance at knocking out Jones because of Jones' age.How very interesting that these 2 have so much in common and are talking about fighting each other, how intriguing is it that these 2 atheletes whom both dominate their respective sports are looking to challenge each other, one can almost call it poetic, or destiny.
