The Doggy Bag: Fox of a Deal

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I was listening to “Beatdown After the Bell” and heard TJ De Santis talking about the “anti-climactic” end to the UFC’s main event between Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami. Are you nuts? Silva made Okami look like an infant fighting a grizzly bear. I am not sure you could get more violence in a mixed martial arts match that does not make it to the midway point of round two. I really need you to go in depth and tell me why you were left wanting more out of an amazing and gruesome fight. -- Scott, from Ottawa

TJ De Santis, Sherdog Radio Network program director: Scott, I am not denying the fact that Anderson was in complete control of Okami. The fight was the epitome of one fighter outclassing another. However, with Silva so firmly planted in the driver’s seat, I would be lying if I said I did not want a stoppage that we could see on highlight reels for years to come.

Jordan Breen and listeners alike have called me a sadist for these comments. Honestly, I do not totally disagree. I call myself an MMA purist. I find a methodical decision just as exciting as a three-round war. It takes a lot for a fight to bore me, but, every once in a while, I get that craving for sheer violence. The fight fan in me was left wanting a stoppage as brutal as some of the other sequences throughout the seven-minute match.

The bottom line is this: Silva smashed another middleweight contender. He is clearly one of the best mixed martial artists in the history of the sport. I wanted an ending that accurately depicted the dominance in the cage; that does not mean that I do not respect the performance from “The Spider.”

Asking more from a fighter as a fan or a journalist is foolish in my opinion. People can go on and on with the rhetoric of how MMA is safe, but the fact is that MMA fighters risk life and limb every time they take the cage or ring. If my craving for an I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened stoppage took anything away from Silva’s performance, I owe the middleweight champion an apology.

It just goes to show you, combat sports athletes can never truly win. If you win a plodding decision, you are boring. If you front kick a man to the face and knock him out, you are amazing. However, when you pull of “Matrix”-like fight moves, people sometimes expect it. It does not happen often, but I think I was guilty of that post-UFC 134. It is time for me to go wash off my figurative “Just Bleed” body paint, watch the Silva-Okami bout again and remind myself how hard it is to do what Silva did.

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