protobuilder wrote:Who posed a serious challenge to his striking skills at 185? Yushin Okami? Patrick Cote? Thales Leites? The "new" Vitor Belfort?? He never faced a freestyle wrestler...
Rich Franklin is a solid striker with over half his wins coming from TKO.
Dan Henderson is both a solid striker AND a freestyle wrestler, up until Sonnen he also had one of the better fights against Silva, so there is something to be said about his weakness.
Vitor has won 14/21 wins by TKO, why would you brush him off as "not a serious striking challenge"?
To say Silva has fought in the weakest division is full retarded. Heavyweight has been, and continues to be far and away the weakest division, I mean Jesus Tim Sylvia was the champ for a decent amount of time... You could maybe argue that middle weight is starting to have less talent/competition, but seriously look at
WHY middleweight has less talent right now!! It is because fighters are leaving that weight class in droves to avoid Anderson Silva. Rich Franklin, Damien Mia, Dan Henderson (my fav fighter btw) are just a few of the guys who have left the weight class because they knew they had slim to nill chance at beating Silva.
Oh, and getting upset because he doesn't want to change weight class.... do you know how much work, and how hard that is? Especially knowing he would have to cut back down to defend his title? The guys you reference as fighting multiple weight classes never faced the level of competition in those weight classes that is seen in the UFC today and thus could get away with being under sized on talent alone (BJ Penn anyone?). On top of that they did not do it regularly, but fought in one class for a year or two, changed for a year or two, changed back. Very rarely would a fighter flip weights for a single fight.
Is Silva the Greatest pound for pound fighter ever? Who knows, there is no way to ever make a definitive assessment for that. But I think at the very least you have to admit the possibility and acknowledge that a decent argument could be made for it.
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