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Brian Stann - Jorge Santiago bout at UFC 130 "a better fight for me" than Wanderlei Silva
Apr 18, 2011 - 9:15:37 AM
Brian Stann - Jorge Santiago bout at UFC 130 "a better fight for me" than Wanderlei Silva
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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

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UFC middleweight Brian Stann made a gigantic statement to the MMA world in January when he knocked out Chris Leben at UFC 125, putting him in company with the division's champion Anderson Silva as the only men to have stopped "The Crippler" with strikes.

Now, Stann looks to make the biggest statement of his career when he meets top ten ranked middleweight Jorge Santiago at UFC 130 in May. Santiago wasn't his initially slated opponent, as the UFC attempted to set up a fight between Stann and Wanderlei Silva on the card. Silva, however, claimed that with Stann being a military veteran he would find himself as the bad guy in the fight, and didn't want to take that matchup.

Stann reacted to Silva's refusal to take the fight in an interview last week with MMAFighting.com, and said Silva has nothing to prove to him or anyone else.

"I buy his reason because I don't see Wanderlei ever having to lie to anybody about anything," Stann said. "He's got nothing to prove for the rest of his life, as far as I'm concerned, especially in this sport... For every one Brian Stann fan, there's about 50 Wanderlei Silva fans across the world. He's an international superstar. There's no way he would have gotten booed coming into that fight. But things happen."

"As fighters get older and they've accomplished more, who knows what's going through his head or what he's got going on in his personal life right now. I don't know those things. Any time that I have actually met Wanderlei, which is very few, he's just been an amazing guy. He's been a champion. So I certainly didn't take it as an insult or anything of the sort. I just took it as it wasn't the right time or the place, and I knew I was kind of even rolling the dice to get that fight anyways."

While he didn't get the fight he initially asked for, he has wound up with a fight with more meaning in the division, against a fighter that has been very successful in Japan since his first stint in the UFC, and returns to the organization off an epic win last summer over Kazuo Misaki.

"At the end of the day, I got a better fight," Stann said. "I love Wanderlei, he's the guy that I said since the WEC that would be my dream fight just because I always loved watching him fight, but let's face it, Jorge Santiago is ranked in the top 10 for the last two years. This is a better fight for me."

Link to Original Source Article

Penick's Analysis: While Silva is the bigger name than Santiago, that fight wouldn't have allowed Stann to prove anything. Wanderlei hasn't fought since last February, and while he's a longtime legend of the sport, a win over him isn't going to get Stann closer to a title shot. An impressive performance against Santiago could very well get him into a contender's fight, or at the very least put him a fight away from a number one contender fight. His finish of Chris Leben was extremely impressive, as Leben has, for a long time, shown tremendous ability to absorb punishment and continue soldiering on. That didn't happen against Stann. If he can beat Santiago in equally impressive fashion, it will make a real statement that perhaps he is becoming an extremely legit competitor at 185 lbs. It's not at all out of the question, and it makes for a very intriguing middleweight fight next month.


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