Apr 23, 2009 - 2:38:47 PM By Wade Keller, Torch editor
As a follow-up to my editorial earlier defending Anderson Silva's fight strategy on Saturday night, I think it's worth noting that "fighting to win" is not always the best strategy for every fighter in every circumstance.
There are limited slots on UFC PPV cards (or WEC or any other company). There are a lot of fighters without enough of a track record against top level competition where it's tough to differentiate between them. For those fighters, it's vital that when they are put in the spotlight on a UFC PPV - prelim or main card - that they risk a little in order to be exciting. While a proven champion such as Anderson Silva can get away with a boring fight or a conservative approach en route to victory, when you're one aspiring unproven fighter in a sea of dozens of others vying for the same PPV fight slot, it's better to roll the dice and be exciting.
As much as UFC is a sport, it's a business, too. You hear not just fighters saying that, but pro athletes in all sports - especially after trades or during a contract hold out - talk about their game being "a business, too."
Dana White's job is to pack UFC PPVs with exciting fights whenever possible, as long as obviously superior fighters aren't being ignored in order to put exciting inferior fighters on cards. Frank Mir said it outright on a WEC card last year when he was critical of a couple fighters who weren't being aggressive enough. He said the truth, which is to get noticed, you don't just have to win, you have to show you'll win in exciting fashion. Otherwise, when you're not an MMA superstar like Anderson Silva, and there are a dozen other fighters who might be as good as you but are proven to be crowd-pleasers, you won't get the nod.
But if one of those fighters ever gets a title, he should hang onto that title by any legal means necessary, including fighting conservatively against a challenger like Thales Leites who folded his hand early in the fight.
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Wade Keller is the Supervising Editor and Founder of MMATorch.com. He has covered MMA for the Torch since before UFC existed, including Japanese shoot-fight cards such as Pancrase in the early 1990s, plus all of the early UFC PPV events (some of those reports can be found in the MMATorch Flashbacks category). He covered the first UFC event in Las Vegas in person in 2001 and Brock Lesnar's recent return to his hometown Minneapolis when he defeated "Crazyhorse" Heath Herring. He has interviewed Dana White, Mike Goldberg, the original UFC match-maker Art Davie, and others in MMA over the years. He has also been interviewed as an MMA reporter by major newspapers dating back to the mid-1990s. He has trained in karate, judo, and jiu jitsu, with over 12 years of formal martial arts training and tournament fighting. He is a double black stripe belt in tae kwon do.
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This whole deal was Thales Leites fault. He should've been fighting to win
the title. He will never get another big time fight after that sad
display. He would've been better off suffering a first round KO. At least
he would have been in good company. I wouldn't be surprised if he loses
his next fight and is dismissed by Zuffa.
