As the UFC’s greatest champion with two decades of mixed martial arts fighting behind him, Anderson Silva should know his body well. He must understand the risk of taking on the fight he has at UFC 200 and believe he isn’t foolishly plunging into a battle for the sake of another payday.
But he is also 41 now and not the fighter of the decade past who stormed into the UFC and seized the middleweight title. He is two months removed from surgery to pull out his gallbladder. An operation to pull an organ from the body is not the kind of thing someone instantly walks away from, especially after 40. There is usually a period of recovery and that recovery does not include jumping unprepared into a mixed martial arts fight against the current light heavyweight champion.
Silva has not been preparing for Daniel Cormier the way Cormier was training for Jon Jones in a fight Cormier desperately wanted to win. There might have been a time when Silva could walk into a cage and dominate a man on short notice. But now in his early 40s, with the doctor’s scalpel having recently sliced his skin, such a move seems foolish.
“I think it’s a personal challenge for me,” he said through an interpreter at Friday afternoon’s UFC 200 weigh-in. “I want to prove something to myself.”
And yet at what price comes this valor? When Silva’s gallbladder was removed in his native Brazil just days before he was to fight Uriah Hall at UFC 198, the promotion said he would need four to six weeks to recover. That was to recover, not jump in the octagon against Cormier two days before the biggest fight of Cormier’s life.
The UFC needs Silva on Saturday night. He still holds the UFC record for most consecutive days holding a belt (2,457) with 10 successful title defenses. From 2007 through 2011 he was perhaps the UFC’s biggest name, a huge reason for the sport’s rise from the fringes to a pay-per-view giant. The UFC might be desperate to salvage their signature event but they wouldn’t be stupid about Silva’s health. Their doctors have examined him and presumably are comfortable with him fighting.
Despite the bloodbaths that some fights become, the UFC has worked hard to repair an image that prompted Senator John McCain to once call mixed martial arts “human cockfighting”. The UFC monitors their fighters’ health and are participants in a Cleveland Clinic project to preemptively prevent longterm head trauma. They have one of the most stringent anti-doping programs in American sports.
“The MMA cleaned up their act, they really did,” McCain recently told The Guardian.
They wouldn’t let him fight if it wasn’t reasonably safe.
Because of Silva’s lack of preparation, Saturday’s fight is only three rounds. It seems the UFC is doing all they can to protect him. But Silva still seems to be taking a chance by plunging into this bout with so little time to get ready. He bounced onto the stage at the T-Mobile Center during Friday’s weigh-in and waved gleefully to the crowd. When he took off his shirt his stomach dangled over his waistband a bit. He did not look in fighting shape. He only weighed 195lbs which was 10 less than Cormier.
Once UFC 200 was supposed to be a super-card led by Conor McGregor. But so much has happened since McGregor lost to Nate Diaz in March. And while 200 still has compelling fights like the interim featherweight title bout between Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar, it is loaded at the top with old men. The co-main event features 38-year-old Brock Lesnar against Mark Hunt, who is 42. On Friday when asked what he thought when he heard he would be fighting Lesnar, Hunt said: “I thought he was retired.”
Silva is still the UFC’s sixth-ranked middleweight. And while he hasn’t officially won a fight since 2012, he had a unanimous decision over Nick Diaz in UFC 183 that was overturned for a positive steroid test. His skill is there and he will fight hard against Cormier on Saturday night. He is capable of catching Cormier with a kick and winning an improbable victory, which will undoubtedly add to his legacy.
But in taking this fight two days before UFC 200, so soon after major surgery and without training, he is playing with his health. Is that a risk he should want to take?
