For those returning, having read the first two installments, you can skip right to the final piece. I've bolded each of the section headings and thrown in picks and video to make that process easier.
In Rio, The Spider Steps on You
Leading up to the fight with Dan Henderson, I think it’s appropriate that we take a look at what makes the fighters great. I’ll definitely spend a little time talking about the numbers, but I’m going to try and focus on the technical aspect, give you some things to watch about the all-around game and the specifics of the way they fight.
I’ll definitely look at Henderson as we approach fight time, but I think that it’s only appropriate to start with the reigning champion of the UFC’s middleweight division, not just because of his status as champion, but also because of how he has been regarded by professional analysts (most notably the ones that the UFC has had do their “analysis.” (I put it in quotes, because it’s not really analysis as much as it’s hyping the fight)
Anderson Silva is not infallible. He is great, and certainly one of the most devastating fighters of his generation, and it wouldn’t be far fetched to say that he’s one of the greatest users of the traditional vale tudo combination: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai.
There’s alot to be said for the length of Silva’s limbs, because, let’s face it, they’re freakishly disproportionate. His reach has always been his greatest physical weapon, but, just like with a thick, stocky fighter, it’s all about how you use it, and Anderson is certainly among the elite in using his natural weapons to their fullest potential.
Saying Anderson controls distance is like saying Peyton Manning throws the football.
When Anderson Silva decides he wants to stand at range, he uses every strike in his arsenal at full distance. He tends to stick to straight punches, but they are so crisp and so quick that people rarely have the opportunity to get around them, despite the fact that they stay at a very traditional, direct angle.
One of the other things that many of his opponents seem to forget, perhaps not in training for the fight, but certainly when they are in the heat of battle, is that Anderson’s legs are also very long and very quick, and he tosses out kicks with the front and back leg with the same ease most fighters throw out punches. That, above all, is one of the reasons why he is able to control distance so effectively without moving backwards. He uses his hands to make his opponents aware of his attack, and uses his kicks to intimidate them, and control their pace, further once he has kept them from being too close.
Anderson Silva’s distance control is something that we see so rarely in the sport, especially at that level, that the only thing I can think of to relate it to is Tim Sylvia’s standup during his early fights. It’s not just a matter of height and the psychological factor of being taller than your opponent, because Anderson is really not that much taller than his opponents, it’s making your opponent stay on his heels, because as soon as he comes on his toes and starts to move forward, he starts eating those straight punches.
It allows a fighter like Silva to be aggressive and really attack his opponent, knowing that his opponent will have to do alot of work to get around the straight strikes, but there are other reasons why Anderson’s distance control is so effective, and that’s because of his clinch game.
If you get caught in the clinch with Silva, you will get hit in the face, that’s just a given. It has alot to do with the technical control that Silva has over his opponents, his ability to keep his hands inside and use the leverage from his long forearms, but it also has alot to do with the length of his legs. Anderson Silva can knee an opponent in the face without really moving his body backwards to counterbalance the weight or pulling his opponent down, something that traditional thai boxers almost always have to do to get their opponent’s heads in range.
The fact is, Anderson has the balance and the length in his legs to smash his opponents face without compromising his center of gravity, and without exerting way to much force, like we’ve seen fighters do in order to control distance. It’s the kind of quality that I’ve never really seen in a fighter, with the exception of Sylvia, because even the legends of the clinch like Wanderlei, have to use those traditional transitions of balance (like forcing your opponent down or moving your upper body back). Anderson’s abilities in the clinch allow him not just to utilize those knees, but also to transition seamlessly between the clinch and his traditional stance, with minimal recovery time, and not lose any of the attack power in his open range striking.
As we saw in his fight with Travis Lutter, Anderson Silva’s skills are not strictly based in his standup, as many fighters have thought. Rich Franklin and coach George Gurgel (Gurgel is Franklin’s BJJ instructor, a blackbelt in the style, and competes in the UFC’s lightweight division) thought that they might be in good shape if they could take the fight to the ground. Franklin’s wrestling wasn’t sufficient to deal with the Anderson’s balance or clinch game, but even if it was, he probably wouldn’t have done much damage on the ground.
If Franklin almost got caught by Yushin Okami in that fight, there’s a serious possibility that Anderson would have caught him with a submission, especially off the back.
When I say Anderson Silva has a blackbelt, it’s something that is taken for granted, because there is such an abundance of submission fighters in the UFC with blackbelts. Make no mistake, Anderson’s submission game is even more formidable than we saw in his fight with Travis Lutter, or his fight with Nate Marquardt.
Anderson’s reach isn’t just exploited on the feet, but also on the ground, especially in his guard game.
As became very clear against Lutter, Anderson’s lanky physique gives him the opportunity to really work one submission in particular: the triangle choke. It’s not just that he can put it on and lock it in quickly (he can do that, but that’s not his entire game), it’s that he can set that triangle up and keep it on from pretty much anywhere, because of the length of his legs. Even if an opponent is posturing up to escape the triangle, as we saw Lutter doing a few times, his legs give him the opportunity to pull his opponent back down when they can’t pull themselves loose.
The length of his arms also comes into effect, as was clear when he started using them to smash Travis Lutter’s head in. The fact is, no one can really defend the strikes and the submission at the same time, but Anderson’s body allows him to put himself in a position to win matches that way, and he has no problem using it.
As far as a way to beat Anderson Silva’s guard game, it’s not a good idea to play low, and it’s not a good idea to stand up (as he’s very well versed with the upkick, one of the moves that led to his defeat of Lutter). It seems almost necessary to pass the guard as soon as you get the takedown, or revert to very technical BJJ and maintain posture while opening the guard and pinning one of the legs, a feat which will not be easy against a fighter as well versed in jiu-jitsu as Silva is.
There are a few flaws I’ve noticed in Silva’s game, but it’s important to remember that these are only tiny nuances, compared to the laundry list of things that he does better than anybody else.
The first is that he leaves himself very open to footlocks. He likes to throw his legs up after his opponent when he is fighting off of his back, but most opponents are so preoccupied with the up-kick that they rarely try and think about taking one of his feet. Silva’s ability to defend the leglock has never been tested (I will not discredit Ryo Chonan, but I think that if he had landed that any more perfectly on anyone else, it would have gone exactly the same), so it is uncharted waters, but the uncharted waters seem much safer than the charted ones, given that everyone Silva has faced in the Octagon has been, for lack of a better term, completely destroyed.
The other hole in his game is not the one that everyone seems to think it is. It is not that he can be taken down. Obviously, Anderson Silva does not mind fighting off of his back. Obviously, he can take punishment. When I hear Dana White and Joe Rogan talk about a potential chink in Silva’s armor, I cringe, because I know that anyone who winds up on top of the Spider is going to have to deal with a very sophisticated, very well practiced guard game that you can’t deal any serious damage in, because you might overextend one of your arms and get submitted.
The problem is much simpler, but it’s not something that anyone approaches because it’s not the way the modern MMA fighter thinks. Every MMA fighter today, with the exception of Shinya Aoki, believes that in order to get the fight to the ground, you have to use a takedown, which means that if a fighter doesn’t want to be on top, he never has to be. And the problem with this mindset, when one goes in to fight an opponent like Silva or Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, is that you overlook a serious possibility, which is making your opponent fight from the top.
There is a stigma on the bottom, because everyone thinks that the guy on the bottom will lose on the judges scorecards, and that’s true alot of the time, but the possibility of Anderson Silva being on top is not as frightening as being caught in one of his triangles as he elbows your brain down into your spinal column.
Making Anderson sit in guard is something that gives an opponent a serious opportunity to exploit what is otherwise Anderson’s greatest attribute. In case my going off on a brief rant has led you to forget what that is, that would be his long limbs.
Anderson Silva’s arms make him a prime target for armbars. The length of his neck makes him a prime target for guillotines from the bottom. His relatively lanky build make him much easier to de-base once one has locked up a triangle. Yet we haven’t seen anyone really try to make him fight from the top since Silva’s fight with Daiju Takase. Takase, for those who don’t know (and since the fight occurred a long time ago in relative obscurity in Japan, I understand if you don’t) won with a triangle choke.
Still, giving Anderson the top position is, like throwing footlocks, uncharted waters. But who wants to go throught the water charted by Leben, Franklin, Marquardt and Lutter anyway?
Anderson can be a victim of his own advantages, I really don’t have any doubt of that. The question is whether or not there is an opponent willing to risk getting punched in the face when they put themselves on their back. Such a fighter has yet to come along, but if they do, it will be interesting to see the reaction they draw, not just from fans, but from other fighters.
Until someone does beat Silva, whether by using the guard or by being more of a wrecking ball than Silva has been proven to be, he will be a force in the UFC middleweight division. While it seems like Dan Henderson has an excellent shot at doing that, Anderson’s skills are still very much a real issue, and his confidence can only be growing as he destroys opponent after opponent in the middleweight division.
Making Dangerous: Why Dan Henderson Wins
As I posted an article on the fighting style of UFC champion Anderson Silva as a lead up to this fight, it’s both fair and necessary to do the same for Pride welterweight champion Dan Henderson. (for those who need the clarification, Pride doesn’t have a 170 pound division, and their welterweight is 185 pounds)
Dan Henderson has been one of the most well respected fighters in the world for a long time, but it is not simply his respectability that has led the UFC to give him two title shots in a row. It’s the fact that he is the only man ever to hold two titles in Pride. This is a look at how he got them, and why he’s been one of the most dominant and physically powerful fighters in two weight classes for years.
The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that when Dan Henderson fights up in weight, he is still often the more physically powerful fighter, because of something that his opponents and training partners describe as the “gorilla grip.”
Gorilla grip really isn’t doing it justice. In the greco-clinch, Dan Henderson is a vice with legs. He gets a hold of his opponents and just imposes his will. It’s not solely because of his conditioning, but also because of his wrestling ability.
Dan’s clinch is one of the most technical attack styles around, and, like most of his fighting style, he operates it with such aggression and commitment that he’s basically pinning himself to his opponent and working them to the mat, where he basically pins them, a la his Olympic caliber Greco-Roman wrestling, and delivers punishment.
Of all of Dan Henderson’s weapons’, though, there’s one that’s respected more than his wrestling, more than that Olympic experience, because of what it’s done in this sport, and that’s his right hand.
Dan’s not credited with being a great boxer, and he never will be. He doesn’t utilize combinations the way that people think he should and he never really sets his moves up with head movement, the way that a lot of great counterpunchers do.
If any part of his style is to be credited with setting up his right hand, it’s his chin. Rarely do I get the opportunity to watch a fighter as willing to eat a punch as Henderson outside of the heavyweight division, but Henderson is one of the guys who has no problem with mixing it up, and he does it better than anyone else.
Henderson moves forward when he fights, and usually that’s because his opponents are wary of his right hand. I’m not sure if Anderson Silva will show it serious respect in their upcoming fight, but there’s definitely a chance that we will see Henderson move Silva into the cage because of his ability to dominate with his right hand and his clinch game. The combination tends to keep opponent’s on their heels, trying to just throw jabs at Henderson and work combinations.
In 28 fights, Henderson has never been knocked out, and his ability to keep moving forward has a huge psychological effect on his opponent, something that I call the “Mark Hunt effect.”
It’s one thing to know that you are hitting your opponent and that you are doing damage, but when you throw a combination you expect to do damage at a guy and he keeps moving forward, there’s a serious mental flag that goes up. A little siren in the back of your head says “wait, that didn’t hurt this guy.” That flag can be ignored if it only pops up one or two times, but if it goes off enough and a fighter starts to realize it, it can really get to him.
There are plenty of guys who try to recreate that impact by smiling and giving their opponent the little “bring-it-on” wave, but every competant fighter, especially a great standup guy, knows that his opponent is taking notice when he does that, knows that his opponent got woken up a little bit. We saw that understanding in Patrick Cote’s fight with Drew McFedries not to long ago.
It’s something totally different when your opponent doesn’t even look like he noticed, and that’s the kind of chin that only guys like Hunt and Henderson seem to offer.
Henderson attacks constantly, whether with the clinch or from his feet, using his right haymaker. It’s really hard to explain how hard Dan Henderson hits, but Frank Trigg put it better than anyone else when he said that getting hit with Henderson’s right hand will put you out, regardless of where it hits your head, but if you catches you flush, that’s the night. Just ask Wanderlei Silva.
Dan hits like a ton of bricks, and he carries his hand in close to his head, almost as if it’s glued to his cauliflower. This is what may present problems for Silva, as it makes it nearly impossible for a fighter standing orthodox to land a clean shot.
If you want to look at the ways to beat Henderson, there are really a few that have been tested, and I expect that Anderson will try to use them to the best of his ability. There are really two tactics that seem to work the best.
The first is to maintain distance and use some technical striking to avoid the right hand. It’s about not being intimidated by Henderson’s relentless attack and just bobbing and weaving. I expect Anderson to do a lot of that, given that’s what he’s good at. It’s also the ability to really use kicks that really plays a big roll for the guys that beat Dan, because that is what keeps him out of the range he needs to use that right haymaker.
Maintaining that distance will give you the opportunity to win a decision, but in a 25 minute fight, Silva may decide that standing with a guy he’s not going to KO is not really his best option.
The second is to attack him from the guard, but that seems to get harder and harder as Dan’s ground game develops farther from wrestling. Still, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to see Anderson pulling out a submission again Henderson, when you consider that Antonio Rogerio Nogueira did it with an armbar when he fought Henderson.
That’s not to say that Henderson’s submission game is bad, but it is his weakest link, and certainly has presented more problems for Henderson than anything else. While he’s worked to shore it up, he’s not at the level of a BJJ blackbelt, and if Anderson can exploit that deficiency, we’ll definitely see some technical groundwork from both fighters.
The secret to beating Henderson on the ground is to not get trapped and not get frustrated. Even Rampage Jackson got a little flustered early in the fight when dealing with Henderson’s raw strength. If Anderson can keep cool and use his jiu-jitsu to create a solid position, instead of getting pinned to the mat by the Greco-Roman skills of Silva, he can use the principle that the Gracie’s have been teaching for years: leverage is greater than strength.
As true as that may be, we can’t forget that Henderson is unrivaled in strength at 185 pounds.
Matchup of the Year
It just doesn't happen often enough; a fight where I am so uncertain about who is going to win that I am flip-flopping about my pick as I am starting to right.
Honestly, I haven't been this unsure about a pick since Fedor vs. CroCop. I've been wrong, but I haven't been unsure.
The fact is, Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson make for a fight that we cannot, with any real certainty, call, and the odds are proof of that. The UFC and Pride Champions are locked even and I doubt that even Wanderlei Silva vs. Rampage Jackson would have been considered this tight of a matchup if it had happened instead of the Henderson fight at the end of last year.
I've already talked about why it is that Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva are forces to be reconned with in the middleweight division, why it is they are both dominant and devastating, and why it is that I so rarely bet against either of them when they are competing in this weight class.
Still, I want to take a second to really look at the dimensions of this matchup, because it's not until you really see how these guys matchup that you see how hard it is for me to make a pick.
Often, just a stylistic advantage can make a choice simple, but this fight offers no such luck.
After all, we have Anderson Silva, who has torn through opponents with mechanical efficiency in his striking, and we have Dan Henderson, who has a chin that has never failed him, even in his fights at 205 pounds and the open water of the heavyweight division. So the question takes us back to the ancient Zen parable: If you take the strongest weapon, and smack it against the hardest dome, what's going to happen.
There's the answer that we've seen from Mark Hunt in his fight with Mirko CroCop, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to compare Hunt's chin to Henderson's yet. (I'm aware that I've done it periodically, but only to illustrate that the man has a very hard head, the question is "how hard?")
I'm certainly ready to call Anderson Silva the Peter Aerts of the UFC middleweight division. He seems to tear through everyone with that vicious set of combinations and tireless attack that I've only ever seen from top K-1 kickboxers like Aerts and his fellow Dutchman Ernesto Hoost. I'll be honest and say that I think that even the guys that we consider aggressive in the MMA world aren't as aggressive as Silva. Wanderlei wasn't, because he had the patience to wait for an opening and bob and weave for minutes at a time. Sure, when he attacked he was devastating and finished every match, but I don't think he's been as aggressive as Anderson has been in Anderson's MMA career.
That said, I think that if we see this fight stay standing through five rounds, it will end very much like the fights we've seen with Hunt in K-1 (namely the three bouts he dropped to Jerome LeBanner and the one he dropped to Hoost, which I certainly recommend to anyone interested in K-1), and not like Hunt's MMA performances (which have been heavily focussed on his submission game).
What that means is that we will see Anderson Silva do serious damage to Dan Henderson, but we will not see the effect on Dan. There will be combinations landed by Silva throughout the fight and eventually the final bell will ring (something that has never happened with Silva in his UFC career).
If this fight hits the ground, this is a different world. We are looking at an incredible wrestler and a BJJ warrior. It is a classic matchups with the next generation spin: that neither of these men are new to each other's world. Both are well versed in wrestling and both are skilled in submissions. The specialties are really only a slight advantage in the reality of things.
If this fight does hit the ground, I am still leaning towards Anderson, but less than I am with the standup, because I'm not sure how Anderson will compete with the freakish strength of Dan Henderson. We are, after all, talking about a guy who controlled Rampage for the first few rounds of their fight, and kept the much larger opponent planted flat on the canvas.
Still, I will give the edge to Silva for a few reasons. The first of which is that I think that his jiu-jitsu is aggressive and gets vastly underrated because people are so tied up with the viceral power of his muay thai. Every time I watch the tape of Anderson's fights with Travis Lutter and Nate Marquardt (guys with very, very well established Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu backgrounds), I'm astounded by how well he makes his style work in mixed martial arts. The use of elbows on an opponent who's resisting the triangle and his ability to just completely destroy Marquardt on the ground makes it hard to believe that Anderson is beatable.
The other is Dan Henderson's history against great Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters, and it is really my basis for making this prediction more than anything else.
Henderson has been twice submitted by opponents with superior jiu-jitsu backgrounds. While one of those wins is often attributed to the raw size of current UFC champion and former Pride champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, his skills are not dismissable.
It is also important to not that Henderson was caught in an armbar by Nogueira's brother Antonio Rogerio (yes, they both have the same first name), who, while he competes at 205 pounds, cannot be attributed with a strength advantage, as that is clearly not the case.
It's also worth noting that the Nogueira brothers gave Anderson Silva his blackbelt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. While I make it a point never to make the mistake of confusing the student and teacher (Kurt Pellegrino is, for example, not as good a submission fighter as his instructor, Hermes Franca, and he isn't on 'roids). Still, in this case I have a hard time letting this slip by, while Anderson Silva is a weight class below Rogerio and two below the current UFC champ, I think that this is really an advantage on the ground.
That said, Dan Henderson is very strong and a great wrestler. If he takes this fight to the ground and maintains top position, he may be able to power through Anderson's submission attempts. He may even take a page out of 'Page's book and try some crazy power-bomb slam. I won't call this one for Anderson and say that he has control of all the outs (this isn't BJ Penn vs. Joe Stevenson), but I will say that I'm going with Anderson on this one.
The prediction: Anderson Silva by decision.
The reality: Anything can happen.
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