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SCRAPP! FIGHT MAGAZINE
February - 2015
19
va himself, however, seems to
want to continue. Fighting is
what he does, fighting is what
he knows.
We’ve seen this story before.
Of course, Silva hasn’t taken
the damage that a Liddell or a
Henderson has over the years.
He’s not at a point where we
need to question his career af-
ter every loss. However, there’s
no doubt that he’s on the
downside of his MMA career.
At his age, there’s no way he
couldn’t be.
So the question becomes, what
will his legacy be? The great-
est middleweight of all time?
The greatest of all time? That’s
a term that is thrown around
all too lightly in MMA, a sport
only a few decades into its his-
tory, in what is basically still its
infancy. At best, MMA is a tod-
dler in terms of development,
yet there are more fighters
thrown up as “the greatest”
in MMA than there are in box-
ing (Ali), hockey (Gretzky), or
basketball (Jordan). B.J. Penn,
Fedor, Sakuraba, Silva, GSP,
Jones: there are probably more
that could be listed as well.
Yet should Silva retire now, he
retires with an unavenged loss
on his record. Two, in fact, to
the same fighter. Does the Diaz
win quell doubts about those
fights? It’s hard to see how it
could. Does it matter?
Maybe. Maybe more to the
man himself than to anyone
else. Silva is quiet, but he is also
proud. He had a lot to prove, to
himself most of all, in coming
back from such a life-changing
injury. Months of rehab. Over-
coming the mental side of the
injury. Coming back and win-
ning.
Yet Weidman looms in the
distance, if Silva wants him. A
trilogy fight would be huge.
It would allow Silva to avenge
the biggest blemish on his re-
cord.
That’s something Georges St.
Pierre, the fighter most of-
ten brought up as a point of
comparison to Silva, was able
to do. Albeit, he walked away
from the sport on a controver-
sial decision victory, he still left
as champ, having cleaned out
a field of top contenders, and
having avenged both losses on
his record (Matt Hughes and
Matt Sera). There’s a sort of
finality to that. No loose ends,
no unfinished business.
Jon Jones, a weight class apart
from Silva on the other side,
has probably the best resume
to his name at this point when
it comes to wins, with his only
loss being a disqualification due
to illegal strikes coming early in
his UFC run, against Matt Ham-
mill. Discounting that, there’s
really nothing but top contend-
ers and former champions on
his record: Shogun Rua, former
UFC champ, Rampage Jackson,
former UFC champ, Vitor Bel-
fort, former UFC champ, Lyoto
Machida, former UFC champ,
Rashad Evans, former UFC
champ, Daniel Cormier, former
Strikeforce champ. Jones is still
relatively young in the sport, at
just twenty-seven, so there’s no
telling what will happen. The
Gustafsson fight was close,
but like GSP, for the time being
anyway, there’s no unfinished
business outside of a close de-
cision, and Anthony Johnson
has, at the very least, delayed
any potential rematch.
So we come back to Silva.
Does any of this matter to him?
Does his legacy matter to him,
or does he just want to fight,
because it’s all he knows and
what he’s trained to do?
In the case of Silva, all evidence
points to the fact that he does
care about his legacy… but he
also feels he can legitimately
compete still. Knowing that, it
wouldn’t be surprising to see
him take another fight. Should
he choose to walk away, how-
ever, he can go out on a strong
win over a name opponent,
having overcome the biggest
obstacle in his career. Legacy
intact.