Thoughts on Silva Vs. Sonnen

***Note: Despite being almost 5 pages in Word (sorry), this blog does not contain a synopsis of the fight.  However it does contain spoilers.  I’ve assumed that readers have already seen the fight.  If you haven’t, watch that sh@#!***

Last Saturday’s UFC fight between the Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen was an amazing experience for so many reasons.  Apart from the fact that it was an epic fight, I feel like I left the bar that night having learned something about sports, race relations, and masculinity.  The following is a collection of my thoughts and reactions to what took place in the ring, in the arena, and in the bar where I watched the fight.

Fight Predictions

I had a bad feeling about this fight from the very beginning.  Silva is by far my favourite fighter because of his exciting and explosive fighting style.  But something told me that the challenger Chael Sonnen might have his number.  Only in hindsight did most observers acknowledge that Sonnen’s superior wrestling gave him the perfect style to be able to exploit the one weak point in Silva’s otherwise impeccable arsenal.  But for me it was more that just the wrestling factor.  Having watched elite wrestlers like Dan Henderson win decisive rounds off a prime Anderson Silva, it didn’t strike me as being beyond the pale that Sonnen could string together three such rounds and pull off a decision.  On top of that, I had watched in bewilderment as Silva put on bizarre, lackluster performances against fellow Brazilians Thales Leites and Damian Maia, both men with hopeless striking ability who for the first (and second) time ever in the UFC managed to go the distance with The Spider.  It seemed to me that at 35, Silva was beginning to lose a step and it would only be a matter of time before some lucky bastard would have the good fortune of being the one to dethrone the aging master.

Fight sports are extremely unforgiving this way.  I remember having my universe rocked to the foundations after watching the previously invincible Roy Jones get KTFO’d by the relatively unaccomplished Antonio Tarver.  It was like a child being told there was no Santa Claus.  Since that day, I’ve had to condition myself into understanding that, in spite of how it may look, all fighters are human.  But I had no idea when I headed to the bar on Saturday that my cynicism would soon be vindicated in such an excruciating fashion.

Fan Loyalties

Prior to the fight I was certain that the whole bar would be cheering against Silva.  In my mind he had 3 things working against him.  1) He was a foreigner (i.e Non-North America) fighting against an American.  2) He was coming off a fight in which he appeared arrogant, and disrespectful of his opponent, while failing to close the show for the third consecutive time. 3) He’s black and his opponent was white.

The racial/xenophobic dynamic that informs points (1) and (3) above is very real.  It is evidenced by the MMA community’s unconditional allegiance to Georges St. Pierre despite the fact that since getting KTFO’d by Matt Serra in 2007, St. Pierre has transformed into a safety-first, grind-em-out type fighter, who rarely goes for the KO and often doesn’t even bother to attempt to pass guard but is content to pot-shot from the guard position.

All this being said, I learned on Saturday that race and nationality aren’t as important as I thought they were, and that points (1) and (3) aren’t nearly as important as point (2).  The bar I was in was fairly neutral.  There were pockets of vocal Sonnen supporters as well as pockets of vocal Silva supporters, but for the most part, people seemed to just want a good fight.  The crowd in the arena started out being heavily in favour of Silva.  Although this is probably because of all the shit-talking Sonnen did before the fight and the fact that Sonnen is just an overall douche in general.

But after a couple rounds of Sonnen absolutely dominating the champion, the crowd seemed to switch loyalties as viewers could hear chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” reverberating in the background behind the fight commentary.  I suspect this was caused by several factors.  The first is that fight fans love drama and they love a good story.  I think the idea of a little-known, all-American kid taking out the Goliath that was Anderson Silva was just too irresistible for the fans in attendance and so most were compelled to jump ship from the Silva bandwagon.  I also suspect that a lot of people actually wanted Sonnen to win from the start (probably for reasons (1) and (3)) but they were afraid to get behind him because until the fight actually got under way, picking anybody to beat Silva seemed like a lost cause.  Once it became clear that Sonnen had a legitimate shot, a lot of his supporters came out of the closet.

Being a hardcore Silva fan, I was pretty amp’d when Silva pulled off the armbar to snatch the unlikely victory, so my own personal celebration prevented me from noticing if there was a second conversion back in favour of Silva and the end of the fight.  I suspect that after the submission (and even while Silva was setting it up by sinking in the triangle choke) most fans started cheering for Silva, partly because it makes for an amazing story (see comeback of the decade), and partly because the submission personified what it means to be a warrior, in the sense that Silva took an ungodly amount of punishment, never gave up and triumphed in the end.  Basically, the guy displayed more heart than a cardiology textbook.

Fight Observations and Analysis

Having read the post-fight blogs and forums, I agree with the majority of observers, who say Silva got his ass kicked for and a half rounds until he caught Sonnen with less than two minutes to go in the 5^th.  But there were a couple of aspects of the fight that I feel went largely unnoticed.

The biggest of these is the fact that Silva was winning the striking battle.  Apart from the very first exchange in round 1 where Sonnen rocked Silva and sent him wobbling toward the canvas, Silva landed the better strikes during the little time both fighters spent on their feet.  Silva even had Sonnen in trouble at the beginning of round four where he appeared poised for the knockout until Sonnen came to his senses and took Silva to the mat.  Sonnen obviously landed more hard strikes on the ground since he was on top for almost the entire fight.  But Silva was doing decent work from the bottom.  He landed some of the hardest strikes I’ve ever seen someone throw from their back, including an almost-surgical right elbow that opened up a nasty gash over Sonnen’s left eye in the 4^th.  For this reason, I reject the assertion that Sonnen got caught in a flash or “fluke” submission.  Silva is a dangerous striker even on his back, so he forced Sonnen to defend against strikes from Silva’s guard, which I think ultimately lead to the opening for the submission.

I even read a few comments from people who thought that Silva intentionally spent most of the fight on his back because he wanted to make Sonnen tap rather than knock him out.  This is based on the fact that Sonnen had made disparaging remarks about Silva’s BJJ pedigree and even questioned the legitimacy of Silva’s BJJ black belt.  They also point to the fact that Silva, who usually has excellent takedown defense, couldn’t defend a takedown to save his life that night.  Given these facts I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that Silva was going for the sub, but I just chalked it up to Silva being 35 and having lost some of his agility and reaction speed.

The Finish

The end of the fight is where I think both fighters showed what they’re truly made of.  If fighters were cut from cloth (as the saying goes) Silva’s cloth would be military-grade Kevlar, and Sonnen’s would be the fabric from a Lululemon sportsbra.  At the time I didn’t think much of it because I was so wrapped up in the elation of the Silva Victory, but Sonnen originally tried to quick tap to get out of the submission.  For those unaware of the technique (like I was 24 hours ago), quick tapping is when the guy about to be submitted does an intentionally ambiguous tap on his opponent’s body.  The idea is to tap just hard enough so that your opponent thinks you’ve given up and loosens the hold, but also tap light enough so that it’s unclear to the ref that you’ve tapped.  An alternative approach is to tap, causing the ref to stop the fight, and then deny that you were actually tapping in hopes that the ref will let the fight resume.  When performed successfully, it can get you out of an airtight submission and provide you with a lifeline.

Some people might give Sonnen the benefit of the doubt and say that in the heat of battle it’s easy to get confused and to not really know if you want to tap or not.  Looking at the footage, I can conceive of a few benign explanations for Sonnen’s half-assed tapout.  But when you consider the history of the fighter and his camp, it’s hard not to call shenanigans.

Exhibit A:  When Sonnen fought Paulo Filho for the WEC middleweight title in 2007, much like in his fight against Silva, Sonnen came in as the underdog and surprised everybody by dominating Filho in the first round before getting caught in an armbar in the second round.  However the fight ended in controversy as Sonnen claimed that he had told the ref repeatedly not to stop the fight.  According to Sonnen, the ref asked him if he wanted the fight stopped, and Sonnen screamed “No!”  However, the referee, as well as several witnesses at ringside (including Dana White) all said that Sonnen was screaming in agony and didn’t say “no” until after the ref stepped in to stop it.  Months later, even Sonnen conceded that the stoppage had been fair.

Exhibit B: Sonnen’s main coach at Team Quest is Matt Lindland, who was involved in a similar controversy in 2002.  At the time Lindland was a rising star in the UFC’s middleweight division, having won four straight fights.  Then he faced Maurilio Bustamante in a title fight at UFC 37.  The fight should have ended in the first round when Lindland got caught in a textbook armbar with no way out.  Lindland clearly tapped Bustamante’s leg prompting referee John McCarthy to step in get Bustamante to release the hold.  But the Lindland complained that he hadn’t tapped and so the credulous John McCarthy restarted the fight.  Luckily for McCarthy, Bustamante ended up winning by guillotine choke in the 3^rd round anyway.

It’s almost creepy how similar these to examples are to the fight on Saturday.  All three fights involved Sonnen or his coach Lindland in middleweight fights against Brazilian champions and all ended (or should have ended) with the American being caught in an armbar, tapping (or screaming like a little girl), and then pretending that he didn’t want the stoppage.  (It also shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that both Sonnen and Lindland have run for congress as Republicans in Oregon.)  But it seems like Sonnen learned his lesson from the first two scandals because this time he only mounted a half-hearted attempt to convince the ref that he hadn’t tapped.  Otherwise he would have risked overshadowing an otherwise gutsy performance that will certainly go down in MMA folklore as one of the most memorable fights ever.

My thinking is that after having talked so much shit going into the fight, Sonnen didn’t want to be seen tapping desperately like some fighters do when they’re in extreme pain.  So instead he tapped once and did it lightly in order to save face.  It wasn’t until after he noticed that the ref was unsure about the tap that he considered taking the opportunity to continue fighting.  But if the officials hadn’t all climbed into the ring to mark the end of the bout, then I have no doubt Sonnen would have continued fighting as he was already doing before he realized the jig was up.

Submission as Emasculation

It’s not hard to understand why Sonnen would want to avoid tapping out at all costs.  At its essence, tapping out is a plea for mercy, and it’s the most humiliating way to lose.  It’s actually much worse than being knocked out because your adversary wields ultimate lordship over you by controlling your fate.  That’s why in so many action movies the bad guy, after all his posturing and evildoing, is ultimately made to beg for mercy, often while peering up the barrel of the protagonist’s gun.  In The Karate Kid part II, Daniel-san compounds the emasculation by letting the bad guy live, forcing him to wallow in the shame of his defeat.

Like the bad guy in Karate Kid, Sonnen displayed some less-than-honourable behavior in the lead up to the fight, and he was beating the good guy’s ass up until the very end, when he too was forced to beg for mercy.  I think the fact Sonnen was winning so handily up until that point only made the defeat that much more demoralizing.

The act of “submitting” carries strong connotations and is directly linked to masculinity, or lack thereof (think of what it means to be submissive in bed).  As MMA moves further away from its roots as a pugilistic proving-ground, and more towards its future as strictly an athletic contest, the stigma of tapping out is getting more and more diluted.  But even to this day, many of the old school fighters would prefer to have their arm broken than to tap, and some still choose that option.

I don’t believe Silva intentionally spent most of the fight on his back in an attempt to land the submission.  But I can tell you this…  If the fighting gods approached Silva with an offer to turn back the clock, along with the promise that this time around he would brutally K.O. Sonnen in the 1^st round without sustaining any damage, Silva would unequivocally say, “Thanks but no thanks.”

Predictions for the Rematch

The MMA world appears to be split down the middle as to whether Sonnen will be able to duplicate his performance against Silva in a rematch.  Personally I think it’s very possible.  Silva looked old and sluggish in this fight, and once that process starts, it only progresses in one direction.  The only silver lining for Silva fans is that he claimed to be fighting with a rib injury that no one is disputing.  If this is true, then the outcome of the rematch will depend on how big a factor the rib injury actually was.  It’s possible that the injury is what caused Silva to look like a totally different fighter from the one we’ve grown accustomed to over the past four years.  If this is the case, then Sonnen’s accomplishment doesn’t look all that impressive to me.  But we’ll never know until and unless the fight happens.