Anderson Silva has the last fight of UFC career, vs. Uriah Hall, in the main event of UFC on ESPN+ 39 on Saturday. So MMA Junkie put together a video fighters summing up “The Spider” in one word. Burt Watson gets things rolling:
My one word for Anderson Silva is genius.
More than just originality, creativity, or intelligence, genius is associated with achievement of insight which has transformational power. A work of genius fundamentally alters the expectations of its audience. Although difficult to quantify, genius is to a level of aptitude, capability, or achievement which exceeds even that of most other exceptional contemporaries in the same field. The normal distribution suggests that the term might be applied to phenomena ranked in the top 0.1%, i.e. three standard deviations or greater, among peers.
-Wiki
I read that FRAT twice and still don’t know what it all means, because I am not a genius. But to me, a genius is someone who does what no one else can, so exceedingly well that you can’t even tell how they do it – they are at the next level. I have been involved in the sport professionally since very shorty after its inception, and Anderson Silva is the only genius I ever saw.
George St-Pierre is as close to a perfect Mixed Martial Artist as ever existed. But when I watch him, I know what he’s doing. GSP took the blueprint set by Pat Miletich – having skills in BJJ, in wrestling, and in kickboxing sufficient to hang in the gym with national class guys in their respective discipline. Pat refined things further, notably defining wrestling as the most important skill of all, determining as it does where the game happens. And GSP, never having wrestled, developed the best use of wrestling in MMA. But GSP and Miletich are not geniuses.
I asked Renzo once was Rickson as good as everyone says? He thought for a moment and then replied solemnly He’s perfect. Rickson famously never lost a match in BJJ, tapping out everyone he faced. That record will never be equaled, but I don’t think even perfect is genius.
Fedor Emelianenko won 29 fights in a row in a division so unpredictable that only one UFC champion successfully defended the title more than twice. Fedor’s streak started on April 6, 2001, and ended on June 26, 2010, over nine years in all. Add four fights and another year if you discount the bogus cut stoppage. Of his 29 fights, if you throw out the no contest, there were five decisions out of 28, a finishing percentage of 82.1%. Ten were against fighters who at some point in their careers held major MMA championships, including Andrei Arlovski, Mark Coleman (twice), Matt Lindland, Big Nog (twice), Kevin Randleman, and Tim Sylvia.
In 2009, I was a couple of feet from Feddor backstage as he was walking out to face Brett Rogers. Fedor was so intensely focused and coiled I was startled – he looked like a predator in the jungle. Then I saw a human again. Occasionally he has hit a throw on world-class fighters that looked like it was out of a Steven Segal movie, but as fearsome and fearless as he is, you can see what Fedor is doing, mostly.
For years and years, at his peak, I didn’t know what Anderson Silva was doing. When he had Rich Franklin in what looked like a loose plumm and kneed his nose due west, I didn’t know what he was doing. When he tapped out Dan Henderson, who would give God a run, I didn’t know what he was doing. When he did that Stop-Time thing with Forrest Griffin and then knocked him down, and then gently helped him up, I didn’t know what he was doing. And that, to me, is why Anderson Silva is a genius, the only genius in our sport’s history.
If you disagree with my choice, that is kind of why I wrote this. I’m a donkey, not a genius, and I’m interested in what you think. At the least, what is Anderson Silva, to you, in one word?
