UFC 208: Anderson Silva May Be ‘Too Old,’ but Being the GOAT Has Its Privileges
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Being Anderson Silva certainly has its privileges.
Silva leaned heavily on those privileges at Saturday’s UFC 208, coasting through a monotonous three-round fight against the overawed Derek Brunson en route to a controversial unanimous-decision win.
Neither Brunson’s strange timidity nor the inexplicable judges’ verdict (29-28, 29-28, 30-27) would likely have happened if that wasn’t Silva out there in the Octagon at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
But maybe that comes with the territory.
After holding the UFC middleweight division in his terrifying sway for seven years from 2006 through 2013 and becoming recognized as the greatest MMA fighter of all time, the 41-year-old Silva has earned the right to phase out of the sport any way he chooses.
It just so happens that Silva’s choice involves sticking around long past his prime. Nobody’s going to tell him he can’t do it, even after grinding to a 1-4-1 record in his past six fights and testing positive for PEDs in 2015.
Even in the wake of this latest clunker, Silva showed no sign of letting up.
“I know I’m too old for fighting,” he told the crowd during his post-fight interview with UFC analyst Joe Rogan. “The guys in here are too fast for me, [too] strong. But I put my heart [into it] because fighting is my life.”
Things haven’t been the same for Silva since he lost his 185-pound title to Chris Weidman via a second-round knockout at UFC 162 in July 2013. In their rematch six months later, he suffered a gruesome and potentially career-ending broken leg.
By the time he returned to the cage 13 months thereafter, it was to a different UFC landscape and in a different role.
Counting Silva’s initial loss to Weidman, the once-stable 185-pound title has changed hands three times, going from Weidman to Luke Rockhold to Michael Bisping. Despite being No. 7 on the promotion’s official middleweight rankings, Silva is rarely mentioned among the serious title contenders.
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These days, matchmakers pick their spots with him, booking him against other big names like Nick Diaz and a pre-title Bisping or using him to bolster flagging fight cards, as it did at UFC 200 in July 2016 and again at UFC 208.
Saturday’s event had already faced considerable promotional hardship. It was set for Anaheim’s Honda Center on January 21 but had to be rescheduled for Brooklyn…
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