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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva earned himself a lot of detractors at UFC 112 on Saturday night in an unfortunate performance against Demian Maia that invoked images of last April's bout with Thales Leites.
Silva came away with his eleventh straight victory in the Octagon, including his seventh Title defense, but it was anything but an impressive performance.
Maia was clearly outmatched coming into this fight, with his only hope of actually picking up a victory being to bring it to the ground. There was simply no chance that was going to happen, and with the way Silva dominated the fight he turned off a lot of fans in the process.
Silva spent the first two rounds messing with Maia, dropping his hands to his sides, gesturing to Maia to come after him and basically showing zero respect to the stand up capabilities of his opponent. It was an entertaining enough show of disrespect for the beginning of the fight, but then it became a frustrating endeavor as the fight moved on.
Silva was clearly better in every capacity of the fight, but refused to engage any more than necessary and turned the fans at Concert Arena, and those watching from home, against him. By the end of the fight the crowd was cheering for Maia and even began a chant for Georges St. Pierre, who was sitting at cageside.
The fight with GSP lost a lot of steam with Silva's performance, as Dana White said in the post fight press conference that doesn't want to see that fight after this performance. He called it an embarrassment and he vowed to make it up to fans.
Silva was also defiant in the post fight press conference, claiming he owed no one an apology and that fights don't always turn out the way everyone hopes. He added that he felt his mission for the fight was completed and he dominated the fight. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean people will want to see him fight the next time he steps into the cage.
Penick's Analysis: This just became a sad joke of a fight by the end. Maia clearly had no shot of winning, and though he finally went for broke in the fifth round Silva still shook off all his attacks and f***ed with him some more. It just makes no sense for him to continue to fight this way when he's obviously a much better fighter. The UFC now has the dilemma of needing to put him in against only the absolute best that they can put in with him in any division, because if he fights an undeserving opponent we can clearly expect a similar fight from him. It's just unfortunate because everyone knows he's that good, he knows he's that good but he's not going in to finish fights. For all the negative comments towards GSP's performance against Dan Hardy, he at least attempted to finish Hardy on more than one occasion and his fight was much more entertaining than either of the Title fights on this card.
RELATED STORY: Penick's detailed UFC 112 event report with star ratings and analysis: [CLICK TO READ FULL ARTICLE]
[Anderson Silva art by Cory Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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