Another reason why no one will beat Anderson Silva

Published: 23rd Oct 11 9:01 am
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by rayang
rayang

Anderson Silva has knocked out Rich Franklin, Forrest Griffin, Vitor Belfort, Yushin Okami, and many other top level fighters in a brutal fashion.  His dominance in the standup has meant that we haven’t seen much of The Spider’s ground game.  There’s an argument to be made that Silva’s ground game is actually underrated and a big reason why he’s likely to retire undefeated in the UFC.

Some people might argue that Silva was afraid to go to the ground against Thales Leites and Demian Maia.  That may have a ring of truth to it, but Leites and Maia are basically ADCC level grapplers who aren’t very good at the other aspects of MMA.  If you look at Silva’s fights against strong MMA grapplers like Hayato Sakurai, Carlos Newton, Travis Lutter, Dan Henderson, Nate Marquardt, etc. you’ll see that Anderson is great at escapes, position reversals, and is really difficult to hold down.

When you factor in that Silva can do as much damage from strikes from the bottom as some people do standing up, this makes it virtually impossible to win even if keep him down.  Lutter tapped due to a combination of the triangle choke and elbows, and Chael Sonnen took some serious shots despite being on top of Silva for most of their fight.  Silva also makes great use of the body triangle- it’s hard to do anything when you have a spider constricting your ability to breathe.  Add the threat of submissions and you get someone with a complete ground game.

Silva might not have much in the way of submission wins, but his ability to fight off of his back and escape most potentially bad situations demonstrate that his ground game could not be said to be a weakness.  Takedown defence is not the same thing as ground fighting.  Chael Sonnen better have improved his grappling for the rematch, or he is going to get submitted or reversed and pounded out.

Also, saying Anderson tapped twice in Japan is like saying Georges St. Pierre’s ground game sucks because he tapped to Matt Hughes once.

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4 Rants to “Another reason why no one will beat Anderson Silva”

  1. CAkenz says:

    Burger King?

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