UFC 97 RESULTS: Silva Disappoints in Rout, Liddell Loses by KO Again
Posted on | April 18, 2009 | No Comments
By: Rich Bergeron
Anderson Silva took 5 rounds to win a lopsided unanimous decision over Thales Leites on Saturday night in Montreal, much to the disappointment of fans in attendance who rained down chants of “bullshit” during one of the fight’s many lulls in action. The main event of UFC 97 was about as entertaining as most of Silva’s recent fights, as the lanky Brazilian MMA virtuoso has been virtually untouchable in his UFC career.
Leites looked mismatched from the jump, and he spent most of the fight on his back hoping Silva would tangle with him on the ground. Instead, Silva kept his distance most of the fight, used excellent head and body movement, and chose his punches and strikes very carefully. Silva’s unconventional striking abilities were impressive and crucial to the win, but his showboating, clowning, and refusal to wade in and finish the fight were crowd killers.
Still, the domination proved it is going to take someone incredible to dethrone Silva if anyone in the world even exists who can match his talent or challenge his complete skill set. Silva used his long reach and style to inflict massive punishment on Leites legs while he wasn’t throwing jabs, side kicks, head kicks, and other unorthodox but effective strikes. It is going to take someone a lot bigger, stronger, and more well rounded than Thales Leites to give Silva a real fight. Only time will tell if anyone currently in the UFC can really give this guy a run for his money, so until some freak of nature comes out of nowhere from some other organization and makes it to the UFC, this guy’s a lock against any fighter you put him up against.
Chuck Liddell’s road to retirement may soon be paved after his latest performance disappointed fans at UFC 97 who watched Liddell mount a huge early offensive only to get caught with a killer left hook that left him down and out on the mat with his head cut open and his eyes glazed over. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua looked horrible for most of the round, but when he connected solidly with a booming left hook, Liddell fell to the mat and could not recover fast enough to survive the few seconds left in the round. Relentless, adrenaline-boosted hammer fists from Rua finished Chuck off, and in the post-fight interview, Liddell would not rule out retirement but did not confirm it either, saying he would have to talk to some people and think things over before deciding what to do next.
He did look better than he has in a long time during the early moments of the round, but his fatal flaw proved to be his hands-down style. As we could all see from the Silva fight certain people can get away with that style, but you have to integrate some head and body movement to be safe. Liddell comes at opponents so squarely and with such a wide-open defense that anyone who can throw a decent KO punch always has a puncher’s chance. Although MMA and boxing are two different things and MMA style boxing is not nearly as defensive-based as regular boxing, Liddell shows signs of needing to go back to the basic first lesson of boxing defense: KEEP YOUR HANDS UP.
Dana White was one of the first people in the cage after the fight and looked to be telling Liddell that he put on a heck of a show for the fans and almost had it won. Lidell, although he did appear to be a bit angry at himself, showed no signs of disagreeing with the stoppage of the fight. While it’s likely Liddell will always have a home in the UFC as long as he wants to continue to fight, he may not want to hang on so long that he becomes a guy fighting on name recognition alone.
Here’s some links to more full fight results from all the UFC 97 action:
http://www.point-spreads.com/mma/041809-ufc-97-results-rua-kos-liddell-in-1st-rd.html
http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/specialevent/ultimate_fighter/blog/2009/04/ufc_97.html
Tags: Anderson Silva > Chuck Liddell > Mauricio Rua > Mixed Martial Arts > MMA > Thales Leites > UFC 97