MMA Fighting - DAMN! They Were Good | Anderson Silva, The Spider Who Turned Into A GOAT

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

DAMN! They Were Good celebrates the careers of the most exciting and influential fighters in MMA history and on this episode it celebrates the career of Anderson Silva, the unquestioned middleweight GOAT and possibly the best fighter ever. 17 years ago this past weekend, Silva claimed the UFC middleweight title with a three minute demolition of Rich Franklin at UFC 64 that began the longest title run in UFC history. For nearly seven years, "The Spider" ruled the 185-pound division with an iron fist, dazzling fans with striking skills that seemed straight out of The Matrix, before it all came crashing down against Chris Weidman in 2013. What were the most iconic performances, what were our favorite memories, and what did we miss out on over Silva's 23 year run? Listen in as the MMA Fighting crews remembers the career of one of the greatest of all time. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Shaheeh Al-Shatti: @shaunalshatti Follow Guilherme Cruz: @guicruzzz Follow Eric Jackman: @NewYorkRic Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix Colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible original Blockbuster. The Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,

What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudullian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster,

the downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The downloaded two, Ghosts in the Machine, available now only from Audible. Hello, friends. We are back. My name is Jedmishu. I'm a writer for Emilyfighting.com. Best website in the whole world, but you already know that because you're here on our podcast network for the big one,

the one we've all been waiting for. The damn that I have been the most pester, bothered, persecuted about, really, some might say. It is Anderson Silva. Damn, they were good. Anderson Silva edition coming at you. And for an event like this, you know, we got to do. We got to round up the troops.

We got to go big. We got three panelists today. And I can think of no finer gentlemen to join me in remembering one of the greatest fighters, maybe the greatest fighter of all time. So we've got, of course, a staple of this network of this program, Mr. Shaheen Al-Shadi, who's currently managing a dog, which is spectacular. A rare occurrence here. The elusive New Yorker joins us.

And then, of course, for something like this, for Anderson Silva, we have the Brazilian beast himself, the new king of Rio, Guillermo Cruz, Phelis, we did it. We're doing Anderson's. Silva, how we feel it? I'm so excited. I'm so excited. This is the most important podcast that has ever been podcasted. I am just so excited to talk about one of the best fighters in history for the next two hours.

It's just going to be so great. I'm so happy. I'm always happy that when you're doing shows about Brazil because then I got a chance to be here. We've got another one coming up, so don't you worry. There's going to be plenty of them over the history of mixed martial arts. It would appear the Brazilians have made their mark. But maybe none more so. Is it fair to say we talked about this a little bit the last time you were on for the wonderful Jose Aldochi.

And I do want to get this out of the way right up top. I just want to confirm what I believe is true. Is Anderson Silva the greatest Brazilian fighter? Or, you know, if you just want to say the greatest Brazilian of all time? I think so. I think he's the greatest Brazilian fighter of all time. If you're talking, MMA or just boxing, like combat sports, he's the number one. Okay, that's, I think, I think we, I have to defer to you.

You are the king of Brazil. But we kind of hash this out with Josealdo, and I got to say, the more I dove into Anderson Sylvan prep for this, the more appreciation I had for the man. I know, I know y'all have a lot of appreciation for him. That's why you signed up. It's why you wanted to do this. Shaheen, maybe none more so than you, who I think from the very first day I conceived this podcast and pitched it and brought it forth, you were like, this is a great idea.

I won in on the Anderson Silva episode when that happens. It's my favorite fighter of all time. Number one. Unequivocally. With a bullet. One, and then there's a gap, and then two and whoever else can be in there. But he is, to me, the central figure who brought my love of the sport to where it was today, where it is today. He is such an integral part of just my life as a fan, as someone who follows this sport, who loves this sport as much as I do.

And he's just a wizard, man. He's incomparable. There is, he's one of a kind in a way that we can barely, rarely say about any athlete, frankly, but especially fighters. And again, I think now is a good time for this. It makes me feel a little old that we're doing this on, what was it? What did you say? It was the 15th anniversary? Oh, buddy.

Oh, buddy. It's tragic. And yes, 15 years ago, not actually 15 years ago, actually a little bit longer, because in 2006, October 14th, 2006, our boy became the UFC middleweight champion, and the longest title reign in history started, essentially just a couple of days ago. A, I cannot believe I'm about to say this number, but I am 17 years ago.

17 years. That makes me feel ancient. I don't know how, I don't like that feeling. But otherwise, I mean, it is, I think it's an important time to have this kind of podcast because there was a lot of weird conversation going on regarding Israel to Sanya after his win over Alex Pereira. And I'm glad we can do this to let the people know,

to educate some people who maybe weren't around and set the record straight on a few things because there's one middleweight goat. And his name is Anderson Silva. Getting a lot less of that conversation about Izzy following events earlier this year. Odd how that happens, those losses. We'll get into it. But first, I want to ask Rick.

Rick, you raised up. You're like, hey, we're doing Anderson Silva. I won in. what drew you to Anderson Silva? There were a lot of names thrown out for our upcoming schedule. Why was Andy the one the one you were in on? Yeah, he's not my number one favorite fighter with a bullet. I was fortunate enough and blessed enough to be on the BJ Penn podcast,

which I expressed my love for that man, my undying and unending love for him. Anderson Silva's favorite fighter. That's right, Anderson Silva's favorite fighter. But he's probably number two. and beyond that, even more so than BJ Penn, he's the author of some of the most memorable and iconic moments in my fandom.

You cannot write the history of this sport without some of the peaks that Anderson Silva achieved, and they're some of the highest peaks that we've seen in MMA, and especially how personal they are to me. I've been able to witness a few of them and experience them. So yeah, he's very special, I think, in the history of the sport, but also like very special in my fandom of this sport and represents a lot of of what I think about today and how I think about MMA today.

So yeah, as soon as I saw that name, I was in. So the, we had a lot to get into. We've got all the categories. And Anderson's career is so frankly just enormously prolific that I didn't want to take too much preamble time. But I did want to raise one more topic before we hop right into the categories here. just because I think it's a really important grounding for some of us, certainly for me and for the rest of y'all, I just want to know.

And let's start with you, Guy, since you are the Brazilian man himself. When did you get introduced to Anderson Silva? How did you come to know about him? What's your first memory of Anderson Silva in your relationship to combat sports? Yeah. I wasn't an NBA fan before I started working. with MMA, working for a Tatami magazine in Brazil. He was already the champion.

I started working in January 2008, I think. Yeah, he had just beat Rich Frank the second time. I mean, I started working with M.M.A. And started watching videos and stuff like that. And then he just fought on Henderson. And ahead of that fight, everybody was talking like. like how big of a deal this fight was because the head was coming. Dan Henderson was coming from pride.

He lost the rampage, but then was challenged for another belt in the UFC. And then Anderson just did what he did to the Hanneson. And was like, fuck, this dude is good. Yeah, that was a, I mean, we're going to talk about that fight. I'm certain that was the first fight where I was like, okay, I guess I got to start giving this man his credit because for a lot of his early career, I was not on board the Andy Silver train. as we'll get into.

But Heen, you say this man's your favorite fighter of all time. When did you first take notice of Mr. Andy Silver himself? So my introduction to this man was probably the same as a lot of UFC fans' introduction to this man, which was the Chris Lieben fight. I was still an MMA fan at that time. I was sort of, you know, I was watching various pride stuff. But Anderson wasn't a big pride guy. He wasn't like a big superstar over there.

So he escaped. Only four times. Yeah, he really escaped. my purview until he comes to the UFC and debuts against Chris Lieben in one of the most spectacularly violent, just all-out, impressive displays that we will ever see from a debuting fighter. And then obviously in his second UFC fight, he just massacres a man who many of us thought was the best 185 or in the world and just takes that title with a quickness. And from that point on, I mean, he was my guy. Like I was a disciple of this man. Everybody that I would mean, everybody that I would

and talk to about the fights, I would be trying to convince them to watch the next Anderson Silva fight. I was just all in. I mean, again, the man was a wizard. The way that he was capable of just otherworldly violence in a way that was almost just eerily effortless, he was supernatural in a way that no one else was, and it lasted for so long. That that supernatural ability did not go away for almost a decade. And it's just almost unprecedented to be able to watch the type of performances that he had over and over and over and over again. And just as it mounted and mounted and the pressure got higher and the stage got bigger, he always handled it with such incredible aplomb and just brought it every single time. I was all in. I was all in from day one.

Yeah. And in a lot of ways, he's still, you know what I'm not even going to say it. What I'm going to say is this has been really fun to go back and watch to go see. all of the peaks and the highs we had. So Rick, what about you? When did you meet Anderson Silva? Was it Chris Leibon? I think Chris Levin, as Sheen pointed out, that's going to be for like most people listening to this podcast right now.

Maybe not even because maybe the people listening to this came too late. But Chris Levin is probably the biggest influx of fans he had in one single go. Yeah. It mirrors exactly what Sheen said. Like I was aware of Anderson Sova in pride, but I was not like tracking him. And at the time, the only time, the only way you could really keep up on MMA was like trading tapes and watch and

reading Sherdog and the underground and like being on forums and like looking at Sherdog records. It was all on Sherdog at that time. And so like Anderson Silva was definitely not one of the names that was like, oh, this is the guy until the Chris Leibbon fight. That's when he when he made his UFC debut, that's when my eyes were. like open to the idea that like oh my god this dude's like doing something special that around that time you start to go back and you look at some of the recent fights he had in cage rage and other

promotions at that time and you can see like the groundwork of that but there's no part of me that wants to pretend I'm the hipster who was following all that until after he made his UFC debut that's when it really like opened my eyes to it so for me um the honest answer is Rio Chonin which is if I will talk about a little bit more, but that's not a you remember Anderson for good reasons. You remember him for the flying sister you look, which is an incredible thing. Remember being on the opposite side

of one of the greatest highlights in the sport. But you kind of knew, certainly if you were deep in the forum game, you know, he had the Hayata Makk Sakurai fight. That was sort of weird, but that was several years ago, so he wasn't really blowing people up in excitement. The one that got me, though, This was the immediate fight before Chris Leibon.

It's Tony Frickland. And just because the uniqueness of that CO, that was the one that, you know, that the Sherdog posts on that were quite extensive for a hot minute. And then he follows that up with Chris Leibon and 06 is clearly his breakout year. But we'll get all into that right now because we're moving into the categories. Before we do, I always give a rundown. But with Anderson, there's way too much of it to do to give. to give him a rundown like that,

which is take far too many minutes and you won't listen to it. So instead, I compiled a bunch of records because why not? Because that's what we're talking about when we get here with Anderson-Silveh. His career was started in 97 and he won the belt, the UFC title in 06, and he defended it for seven years. He holds UFC records for longest title reign,

2457 days, most consecutive wins. I'm giving him most title defensive. is tied with Demetrius Johnson. He technically only has 10 because they don't count Travis Luter, but that's bullshit, and I'm here to stand on that corner. Most finishes in title fights, most knockouts in title fights, most knockdowns in title fights, longest finishing streak. He was the first fighter to take the top spot in the UFC's pound-for-pound rankings.

He holds basically every UFC middleweight record and a whole shitload of other top five finishes across other records. the man has done it all and we're going to get into talking about all of that. And oh, by the way, he entered the UFC Hall of Fame earlier this year. So, right into things, right with the Mount Rushmore. And we were talking about this a little bit off air beforehand. I'm really excited about the categories this week, y'all, because I usually find, you know, Anderson's, I think, our 18th damn fighter.

and it's been a bit of a rhythm here where a lot of fighters, most fighters have a couple of categories that might be competitive, but there are some clear winners. Like we did Robbie Law and it's like, well, three fight of the years, you have to include all of those. And then it's this. With Anderson, at least for me, it feels like this is the most to taste of all of the categories, of all of the fighters we've had, where he just has so much great stuff. and none of it is

like massively better than the rest of it it's all just high quality that you get to pick and choose your spots and what means the most to you and what you like the most. So I think we're going to have the most diversity we've ever had. That's at least where I'm going into this with.

And we start with the Mount Rushmore. It's four fights, four fights from the career. I'm not entirely sure how I want to start this. So I'm just going to start with mine. And we're going to lead off with a fight that I'm not sure if you guys will have on there, but I didn't want to just have the UFC run. And, Chene, as you mentioned, you know, it's not really like the Pride run stood out that much.

She was there. He fought a few times, but it's not that great. Obviously, Cajarage is a good run, and maybe some of you will have one or two of those performances in here. I went back to Shudo, and I led my Mount Rushmore off with the Hayato Sakurai fight. Because contextually, I think this fight is really important for his career. Anderson once called Mock, the toughest opponent he ever faced in an interview a couple of years ago, is very young. It's not, you know, this isn't like, this is not who you think of when you think of Anderson Silva. But I think this win is forgotten about for being as important as it is because at the time, Sakurai was arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

He was undefeated 18 wins. He had a win over Frank Trigg. he was coming off a silver at the 80 Cs in the open weight division. He was one of the very best fighters in the world, and Anderson Silva was not, came in and really dominated a lot of that fight. You can find grainy footage online. You can watch the whole thing. It's awful, but it's really important. It's really important because I'm going to pair it with a second one that you guys probably some of will have.

Forrest Griffin. a UFC 101. These two are connected to me in a way because I couldn't confirm this. I spent a lot of time trying to see if I, like, could. I'm pretty sure, though, that once he beat Forrest Griffin, Anderson Silva became the first fighter in, like, modern MMA history to have top five wins across three-way classes. Because Mok Sakurai was one of the top pound-fifound fighters in the world.

That fight was at 168. So welterweight. Forest, obviously, at 205, and then the extensive middleweight history. So I wanted to get both ends of that in my Mount Rushmore because I think it is such an incredibly unique achievement to occur to do something like that. And then I also rounded my Rushmore out with Rich Franklin, the title win, because it's the title win. It feels like that one probably needs to be in here.

But if you chose not to, again, there's a lot of choice. And then I went Chale Son and won, arguably the greatest comeback in the history of MMA. one of the fights that put him over in a way with with the broader certainly American fan base and that just covered another aspect of his career so that's my mount rushmore questions comments concerns I like it mine was definitely more UFC heavy in fact it's all UFC fights because I think that is where the prime of his career occurred and that's where the moments that I think were the most significant occurred, but I certainly gave thought to going back further and thinking about like the significance of the fights before that. But his peak was so hot and the length of it

was so long, which we don't often see. We kind of see like most of the time, the fighters hit their peaks and then they kind of either fade or like it's slightly diminished. His peak was so, burned so bright, but also was so long that I couldn't help but just like pick the fights that fell in that range. But I understand. I had the same instinct, but when I, when I put them all on paper, I ended up with four UFC fights. Okay, Ricky, let's put you on the spot. What are the four? Did we overlap? Did you have any of what I offered? Yes. I had some overlap, but not much. So what I had was, uh, Rich Franklin won. And I debated between that and the Chris Lieben fight. Those were the two that I was swapping. I had the exact same one. I have Chris

Levin is my number two honorable mention. And that was the one where it was because that felt like a welcome to the war to the American audience. Well, here's your coming out party. And Chris Leban is arguably that. We know, we talked about it up at the top. But Rich Franklin is certainly more substantial. I want to open this up to Guy and Shaheen. Do you guys have either of these fights, both of these fights on your Mount Rushmore? How did you approach the Rich Franklin, Chris Lieben sort of section here? Yeah.

So I had the same dilemma as you guys where it felt like at least one of those two had to be included. And to me, this was the hardest Mount Rushmore that we've done. Previously, I'd said that about Robbie. Interesting. Previously, I'd said that about... I think Robbie Lawler remains the hardest still. So that was what I was about to say. Previously, I'd said that about Robbie Lawler.

This one was more difficult to me, and I think there's maybe because there's just a little bit more, again, favorite fighter. It's just a little bit more to it for me. I almost wish we would have done the same thing we bandered about with Robbie, where we did an all-knockout Rushmore and then an all-performance rush more because that would have maybe been easier. We can because he has like the second most knockouts in UFC history. So there's plenty of meat on the bone.

Yeah. that would have simplified things a little bit for me but for me it did feel important to get one of these two in there because it did feel like these two are sort of the breakout right these are the hey world i'm here and you're going to have to get used to me type of performances and sort of everybody's introduction in that era to anderson soba ultimately i i went with the rich franklin fight for my first mount rushmore like eric i did all ufc because to me the story of anderson sylva is him in the ufc there's not a ton outside of that that outshot it to that degree that it feels important to represent it. So I will, Rich Franklin won as my first

one because again, UFC title, winning the UFC title in his second fight in the promotion, beating a guy who at that point in time, like Rich Franklin was very unanimously the best middle weight in the world and a guy that a lot of people were looking at like, oh man, who's going to be able to stop Rich Franklin for Anderson to go in there and not beat him, not just knock him how, but just utterly outclass him to the degree that Rich Franklin did not, like, belong in that same cage with him. And you, you talk to Rich in the years afterwards, and Rich is like a very upfront and honest guy about how badly Anderson beat him and how badly he almost just shocked him with how easily the whole thing was. That to me, that's an all-time great title fight.

That's an all-crime time, or a title fight performance, I should say, all-time great changing of the guard. And that has to be in there. Dude, he ruined Rich Franklin's entire career. And I know that that seems like slightly harsh because, you know, Rich Franklin went on to fight a bunch and have success and do all these other things and kind of have a jokingly named Franklin weight of 195 established. And yet the first thing I think of, and I think a lot of people think of for Rich Franklin,

it's not sending, you know, Nate Quarry to the shadow realm. It's not kind of putting the nail in the Chuckledale coffin. None of that. It's getting demolished by Anderson Silva in a way that is still like, dude, it's still hard to watch. It's haunted. It's haunting. You can see Rich Franklin's eyes in both of those fights in various times when he's stuck in

that in Muaytick, where his eyes just looked like, dude, what have I got my life into? It's like, I, that is a man in real time reckoning with his own limitations in the most violent way possible. It is. You said there's a weight class named after him. Franklin Wait. There's a weight class named after him because he was exiled from middleweight after it was clear that he could fight Anderson 400 times and he would never even make a dent into it.

Did the same thing, the exact same thing in the rematch to him too. It's just unbelievable. Gee, did you, you've been smiling along. Did you also have Rich Franklin on your Mount Rushmore? Yes. I have this, like for all the reasons that you just said, like, That win is amazing.

Like the nose job he did on Rich, frankly, was like, flawless. His nose was never the same. I just feel bad for him as watching that fight. He gave him that Andreelowski nose. Yeah, I just have just can't not too bad for the guy that was brutal. And my list has the Joe Sonny win that you just mentioned as well. Oh, not Rushmore. I just cannot include it.

and the Forrest and Griffin as well. So my list is yours. Okay. So we've got a lot of overlap then. But I have one spot left. Yeah. We've got a lot of overlap then. Okay.

So we do have a unanimous inclusion of Franklin one, which is good. Rick, let's go back as you were going through your list. What's your next one then? Next one's Forrest Griffin, which I know you also had. Sounds like he also had. Same. To me, that was like the pinnacle of. of his athleticism showing off like what he could really do.

A lot of people, you know, like, I think at the time, like, if you go back in time, the idea of like fighters like bouncing up weight classes just for fun was not a thing. Like there were not fighters just like willingly going up to weight classes just to like test top ranked guys in those weight classes. We're talking about like a champion in Forrest Griffin. Well, and James Irving. I won't call James Irving top ranked. But yeah.

Fair enough. But could you imagine a champion on sharp on sharp. That's the thing. That's the thing. The circumstances. Could you imagine a. Do you, Eric. Exactly what you're about to say, Eric.

Could you imagine a champion like just going up to take a fight to save a car? And by the way, like Silva's done this a dozen times in his career. Like if you look at the far, not the Faris Griffin, but yes, the Faris Griffin, but the Stefan Bonner fight was the one I was going to mention next. Where he's just like, throw me a guy and I'll just take him out. I don't care. You won't. Like, as game as Alexander Volcanovsky is right now and willing to do this, those are for titles. This dude was just willing to ruin light heavyweights just for fun.

The no one pound for pound fighter in the whole sport. John Jones has never been out here just being like, yeah, sure, I'll fight random dude of division up. On two days notice, just because I love to. Like, that is an absurd thing for a man in the position that Anderson was in to repeatedly do with no, care in the world. Yeah. He fought Daniel Kormier, to your point, on two days notice.

After surgery. After surgery. After like surgery for his liver or something. Yeah. You know, I don't say this often in life, and certainly not on this podcast, but I've never thought about that. And that is a phenomenally good point,

because this really is one of one. Like, there has never been a champion ever who just sort of casually, while having the belt. Other fighters have, you know, bounced around weight more since than than before. But like, yeah. Because imagine what happens if James Irvin beats him.

It's all gone. But it didn't matter and it didn't. And so you never see, we're never going to see Volcanovsky just, you know what? I'll go fight trying to think of Rooney because I want to. Yeah.

Well, no, because Arm and Sarukin's good. James Irman was still like a top 10 light heavyweight. Yeah, but like, Forest, I think. The forest one. Yeah. Forrest. I'm not seeing Volcanovsky go fight Drew Dober just to do for gigs.

Yeah, what's the upside? There's no upside. Not just champion, but champion in the midst of the most dominant title run in UFC and MMA history. Not just like, oh, he's the champ. He's also the champ who like showed what it meant to be a champion for as long as he did. It's freaky, man. It's truly one of one.

And this is from like I've given BJ Penn enough kudos forever for what he was able to do in terms of testing the limits of weight classes. But this is something completely different, like what he was doing. Plus 185 to 205 biggest jump in the sport like between weight classes. Man, that probably needs to be an argument that said a lot more loudly with the chest and the goat conversation for Andy. That's a great point that I did not really think a lot about. It is one of the things that drove me so bad shit insane when the Izzy talk was going on of just like all the erasure of all of this of like, oh, is he so willing to do this? He's so willing to do this.

It is not even close to comparable for anybody ever what Anderson Silva was willing to do because I will go to my grave. I have like you, Eric, I had the Forrest Griffin fight as my second Mount Rush. So in two unanimous then. Yeah, because that one, I will go to my grave. That is the single most underrated result. in the history of this sport. That is the single most underrated performance

in the history of that sport. Because people see it now, right? Like, oh, Forrest Griffin, whatever. Like, big slow guy, Anderson, of course, beat him. Forrest Griffin was literally the light heavyweight champion of the world of the fight before that. Like, that was the first fight after losing the belt. And Anderson Silva, for no reason, goes up and fights

would essentially be the number one ranked light heavyweight now if it happened right now. And put a beating on that man to the, degree, like to which the degree of ridiculous, like we have just never actually seen outside of it ever again. He made that man look like a small child who didn't belong in the same cage as him. And this is the dude who was the champion, a division up from him like six months before that. It is unprecedented the levels to which that is impressive, just on its on its general grounds like that. And the way that it's looked back in history is not fair in my opinion, because it is,

is genuinely, you watch that fight now, like, it is, it is art. It is absolute art watching what he did to Forrest Grypton. It's incredible because he only took that fight because he was bored and middleweight. Like his previous fight was Talis Lages, who many people didn't see any chance for him to, of Tadis bidding. And I'm bored, giving me a challenge. okay, so just move up and fight for a script. Okay, it's normal. It's normal.

It goes there and just destroys the guy. One of my favorite stories ever of my MMA fandom came from that fight, too, because I was sort of, I'm sure you guys maybe were in similar spots at various points in your life where you're the MMA fan of your friend group and everyone else is maybe casual or kind of just like comes along for the bigger fights. And so you kind of get that job of like explaining the narratives and this guy is this guy and keep an eye out for this guy, you're sort of the info, info explainer on the night. And I remember the night of that.

UFC 101, I was the info explainer for everybody. I was like, oh, man, keep an eye out for Anderson. Like, he's about to do some really terrible things to Forrest's here. And everyone was so caught up with the Forrest Griffin champion thing that everyone in that room bet against me that Forrest Griffin was going to beat Anderson Silva. And so I had like four or five different like small bets going with my friends. And then, of course, the performance that we saw plays out. And I was, when I say that,

I was insufferable. You do not understand the levels of insufferability that I reached. Not only on that night, because that night was one of the greatest nights of my life with just the joyousness that I was gallivanting around that house. But then the following week, I was so petty with it that I went and got all my friends' monies changed down into pennies and quarters and nickels at a bank and then sent them a picture of me drowning in their own money type of thing. That was one of the best moments as a fan was watching Anderson do what I thought he could do before.

I had a very, I talked about early that Anderson Silva was also like a personal thing for me beyond just like the legacy of it. So UFC 101 in Philadelphia was my first time seeing a live MMA event. And I have the same, a similar fan experience. But instead of my friends doubting me,

I bought four tickets to that show. I believe at the time, they were around like 500, bucks each for 100 section. So they were not cheap because it was a return to Philly. They hadn't been there in a bit. It was an expensive ticket. I had four tickets.

I had one friend who was not as hardcore as me, but loved MMA, who came with me. And I had two friends that said they wanted to go and then pulled out. So I tried to sell it, couldn't sell it. I ended up eating two tickets to that show. I go to that event. And obviously, Anderson Silva is on that card. BJ Penn is on that card against Kenny Florian. there's not a lot to write home about on the prelims.

There's some interesting stuff, but it was kind, the energy was kind of out of the building. And when I tell you, and I have since covered many UFC shows for ESPN, for MMA fighting, I have been to venues. I have been to events. When I tell you that I've never been in a building that was louder than when Anderson Silva style down Forrest Griffin, it, if I true, like it's hard to describe now. It felt like an earthquake. It felt like the arena was like.

like rocking in place and people were just like losing their minds in the stands. And I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. And Anderson Silva was the author of that. But yeah, it was my first UFC show in person. It was insanely special. And I've never experienced anything like that before or since in a sporting capacity where he just completely unhinged an arena. I felt like it was going to float into the sky.

Like it felt like it was just like gone from from the, earth. It is, it's the, it's the single most Hollywood-esque matrix X performance that's been put on film in MMA history. Just considering the like level of competition and who he was doing it against in the, and just the circumstances around it, it's, I, I repeat myself, it is the single most underrated performance that this sport has ever seen. It's unbelievable. It's if, it's if Islam Mogachev right now went up and wait and was like, hey, I'm just going to fight Kamar Ustman, just because, and then if I, once I destroy him, I'm not really going to pursue the title. I'm just going to come back down and keep doing my thing at my division.

Like, it's just, it's crazy. And face the guy who's supposed to be my kryptonite in Damia Mayo, who's a grappler, who's supposed to take me out. I, far be it for me to step on your hyperbole, but I think calling Kamar Usman and Forrest, Griffin, equal levels of former champions is maybe a stretch. No, it's just whoever the number one guy at that point is. since we're all sharing personal stories, let me share my personal story about this because I remember it well, because this was my 21st birthday, and I was pissed off because for my 21st birthday for years, I grew up playing poker with my family. My grandmother taught me, like, it was very, for years, and I was 21 going to Vegas.

It was the thing we were going to do. So my dad and I went to Las Vegas. We flew out the 21st, and I was pumped because it was Vegas. It's fight capital of the world. surely I can go watch a UFC event. No, because this stupid card's in Philly. And so I was pissed off. And then let me tell you how mad I was because also BJ Pins in the main event.

And I was like, this could have been the best 21st birthday ever to be hammered, be gambling, and I can go watch this fight. And instead it's at Philadelphia. My dad and I watched a pay-per-view at, I don't remember where we were, one of the sports books or whatever. It was insane. I was pissed off. And then the next day, WEC 42 happened, which was at the Heart Rock in Vegas.

And I did go to. And that was pretty damn cool. But still, I was livid that I missed this, particularly after the fact with what happened here. So I was, I was 22. So my birthday is August 1st, so this is a week later. So it was like my 22nd birthday present. Man. Look, I could have used one of those extra tickets if only we had known each other at that point, time.

Right. It would have been perfect. All right. So, Rick, we've got, you have one more left for you? I've got two more. I've got. You've just done Forrest and Franklin. Forest and Franklin.

Next, Chal Sondon, like, we could do five essays on this. We're doing one, Chal Sondon, one, not two, I'm assuming? Number one, yeah. Okay. The comeback at UFC 117. Yeah, I mean, what more do I need to say about that? Dominated, turned it around the triangle. Like, there's enough.

been said about this that I don't need to go very long here. I also remember this fight extremely well. Guy, I know you have this one. Shaheen, is this on yours or did this make it? Yeah, I mean, this this. Wow, so we're going to end up with three unanimous choices. This one felt like if you have to, if we're all going to end up with one, it's going to be this one, right? Like, this is like, this is like, this is the greatest comeback of all time. This is one of the greatest, greatest rivalries of all time. This was DC Jones before DC Jones. This was Izzy, Alex, before. Izzy Alex, like this was the rivalry of its era. And a lot of that was because of the way that Chalesana talked about in a sense of it, but also a lot of it was the way that this fight

played out and the way, like how you could do this, run this back 10 times, and you would never get a result even remotely resembling this because it is just so singular in how exceptional it is. Shehene, I have the exact opposite of your story about being, you know, I was the MMA guy amongst my friends. And this was like one of the very first pay-per-views that my friend group at the time was like sold on because of chale because you know chale did all the thing and this is the thing so we you know there's a group like 15 of us we're at a house we're watching it and uh much like you did with your friends is like look i enjoy chale sonn a great deal i think

he's very stupid and silly but it's funny Anderson's going to beat him because i'd watch chel son and fight before i'd watched chel sun and fight for a long time and let me tell you But Chale Sunnan, not many people in history have had a career turnaround like Chale Sondon has. We inevitably do a damn on Chale. It will be a fascinating experience because for a very long time, he was a lay and pray artist that no one cared about. And then he started talking, but he still wasn't even great at fighting. You know, he eeks out the win over Michael Bisping later in his career or whatever, right? Because the Bisping came before the second one.

But prior to this, you know, he'd be in Yushin Okami in a lackluster fight, Nate Markhor. And I'm like, Anderson's going to kill this, dude. I wasn't the biggest Anderson guy, but Anderson's going to kill Chale because he's not good. And for 22 minutes, my friends who didn't know jack shit about MMA were laughing in my face in the most insufferable fashion. And I'm having a great time with it because what can you do with laugh? I'm like, I don't know. I remember distinctly being like, I think that there's a possibility

that Chal's son and has sandbagged his entire career and he's actually good at fighting but he spent the last decade pretending to suck at it so no one would see this coming because I don't know what's going on and then in the fifth round the miracle triangle I'm like, that's the Chal Sondon and I know. That's him.

And it was the greatest turnaround for me personally because I had a room of 12 people who were being huge assholes to me for 20 minutes have to eat their words in a very, very short fashion. So for no other reason, it would make my Mount Rushmore because that experience I will always take with me. But yeah, you know, it's also the greatest comeback in UFC history or whatever. Rick then, close years out.

My gap apparently were very unanimous, but for one, I went mocked Sakurai. What did you go for your fourth? I went with Vitor Belfort. I think the reasonable, the bad blood, the rivalry, and then the way it ended

and feeling like this was Anderson Silva's peak, you know, obviously we can kind of debate later, but feeling like this was like Anderson Silva at his highest possible form. It initially didn't make my list because I just felt like at the time,

like I was fairly certain Anderson Silva was going to win that fight. I know there were some people, who were on Vitor Belfort at that time, but I was I was fairly certain that Anderson Silver was going to be able to get this done. And I don't remember being as like shocked, but certainly the way it was done, the iconic image that now exists of his foot just in Vitor Belfort's face and the settling of the bad blood that had been built up. It was one where I had it off and then had to add it back on because it was impossible to leave off for me.

I think that that makes a ton of sense. I do want to serve a lot of sense. I do want to serve circle back because I had a question written down that I skipped. Guy on the Chale Sunnen fight, because this is something that you can get a lot of perspective on. How was that fight received in Brazil coming in? Because obviously, Chale, we just say it. Chale said a bunch of fairly racist and xenophobic stuff in the buildup to this. Kiyah had really made a point of attacking Anderson. What was that experience like from a Brazilian perspective?

What was the comeback like? I think we'll talk about the VTor fight in a second. and at least to my understanding, that's the fight that really got Anderson over in Brazil, like to be a super megastar because of what Vitor means there. But what did Ceyl do for Anderson and how was that fight received? Like when Kobe Coveton did his thing before and after fighting, Jamie Amaya, there was Ceyer doing similar things.

Like, let's see in a better way because Kobe is not that good. in terms of like like Cher was and I mean I'm not like good it's just so dismissive in the best way

it's Kobe's not that good yeah Anderson was was getting big in Brazil I mean the first with a fight was a piece of art and he was getting

more and more exposure because UFC would air on Combat, which is owned by Global, so Global would start doing pieces about him. But it was still like, in rare occasions, you would get hyped outside of the NMA bubble. And this CHO fight became a big deal because of the things he was saying. So mainstream media, mainly global,

start paying attention to that fight, they were promoting, they were promoting, they were promoting that because of the things J.O.S. I was saying. So after the fight, after what he did, like, get beat for nearly five rounds and coming back, and then repeating he had a rib injury. There was all this narrative that a hero coming back to win to defend his title, to defend the honor of Brazil against just a loud mouth Americans. So that was a big deal. And that helped the future fight.

because Anderson became a bigger name because of Cheo in Brazil, and then he thought, Vito Velfo, who was a massive star in Brazil, that's way, way bigger than Anderson. So that fight was the turning point for MAA in Brazil, mainly because of Vitor, not because of Anderson. So did you put Vitor in your fourth spot on the Mount Rushmore? Because I sort of assumed you would.

Just can't play. just a definitive moment for him, especially in Brazil. And also in the US and other countries, like what, I mean, Vito wasn't like this killer. I mean, he was fighting well in affliction, then he came back to the F. Had a couple of KOs. But the thing is, Anderson Silva was just incredible fighter,

incredible chin, but Vito hit hard and the word questioned. were questioned. I mean, Anderson Silver is the favorite, but what if Victor Lansing's left hand? Can Anderson's chin hold up to that? So that was the main question. But to the casuals, to those who used to watch Victor Belfran on reality TV shows and all that, they thought that Victor was the favorite because they didn't know much about Anderson Silva. So that was a bigger part of the shock that people like, okay, this guy's ridiculous. Look what he did to look at this upset, you know, because they didn't know much about innocent and silver, even if he was becoming a bigger name here in Brazil.

So I kind of suspected you'd have Vitor for a lot of reasons here. Shaheen, is Vitor your number four? He is. He is. I think actually me, Eric, and Guy may be all on the same dimensional play here. Your own lockstep. I... We are all in...

See an eye to eye here. He, for me, was my number four as well. And it was really just for a lot of what Gierremae just said, right? That was the iconic one. That was the one that catapulted him into superstardom in Brazil. Our good friend, Esther Lynn, the goat, got an incredible photo from that finish. I know a couple of others have incredible photos as well. It's, I mean, front kick to the face.

Like, it's an actual iconic phrase in the MMA lexicon. And that had to be in there for me. Yeah, it was the knockout of the year, I think, for 08. Had to be. You had to be. So it was, it was real close to not being in there for me. We would have, we've been different. But I, I swapped in and at the last second.

So I thought that this would be the one, you know, I knew the other ones there at least was a chance that there'd be overlap, certainly on some of them. I didn't think we'd go three for three on three of them. This was the one that I knew I'd be a little contrarian leaving out. But I intentionally left it out because. I do this a lot now, done this podcast 19 times or whatever, and I've started to figure out how to hide other things. I want to talk about in other categories. And so if I was strictly doing them on Rushmore,

this probably is on it as one of the most significant and important ones. But I put this fight in a separate category so then I could also talk about Piatomak Sakurai. So the one that I didn't put was Dan Henderson. Did anybody else consider? I was about to go into honorable mention. Dan Henderson is my number one honorable mention. I had three honorable mentions.

It was Hindo into Chris Lieben and Daniel Korme. It was my number three. Leban, we already talked about. The Henderson one, I sort of alluded to this, but this one was really, I spent a lot of time between this and Sakurai, and I ultimately decided Sakurai for the reasons I said. Hindo was the one that probably means the most to me

as far as my relationship with Anderson Silva and who he was, you know, as an athlete and as a, as a fighter. Because I was not on the, I was not on the Anderson Silver Bandwagon. You know, he came to Chris Leibin, and I knew he'd beat Chris Leibin. I had no illusions about that because I didn't really think a ton of Chris Leban. I absolutely thought that Rich Franklin beat him. It's like, yeah, Rich Franklin's going to beat him. I learned no lessons in watching him demolish Rich Franklin.

I was like, well, don't clinch with him. Obviously, that's, you know, who can't. can clinch with him. Silver medalist Dan Henderson can or whatever. Like, Dan Henderson can clinch with anybody, and Dan Henderson can strike. And Dan Henderson's the Pride middleweight champion. And over in pride, Anderson Silva couldn't beat Rio Chonin. He couldn't do shit in Pride.

Dan Henderson's going to do it. And when he comes here, I still thought Rich Franklin could beat Anderson in the rematch. And I was like, well, you're going to have to wrestle him. Dan Henderson could wrestle him. And then I watched him for like five minutes. was like, hell yeah, Dan Henderson's doing it. And then Anderson turned on the jets. And that was the fight that made me be like, okay, yeah, I'm in. He's good. He's, he's, he's, he's the best guy. So that was my number one. And I strongly considered it, but I just wanted a little bit more variety.

That is why I ultimately was torn and had it initially was because I remember thinking in those moments like Dan Henderson is a guy who can compete with Anderson Silva and possibly beat him. And I did not feel that way about Vitor at the time. But when I just went back and looked at it and looked at the iconic moments and what it did for his star power, it was just I had to put Vitor in. But Henderson was what I had initially because of what you just said. Like I felt like Henderson and Silva was the matchup at that time between the two best guys. I wanted that matchup for like a year and a half or whatever. I was like, hell yeah. Because, you know, he comes over and first Dan Henderson, you know, it comes over in the pride acquisition. You're like, all right, this guy rules. And first he fights.

Rampage and like Rampage won, but that fight was really competitive and really close. And I know at some point in time, some people thought Hindo won that fight. It's like, all right, he's going to drop down to middleweight. He's going to wrestle him. And, you know, we're also, I think, I don't know if this fight's going to come up because I didn't have it in any categories, but it bears mentioning. The Travis Luter fight is, like, that kind of carried around on Anderson for some fans, me in particular for a while, the ease with which Travis Luter, who was not going. and no one thought was good, had success against him really colored sort of my expectations on who Anderson was for a while. And the Hindo fight is when I was like, yeah, never mind.

I was just Stone Cold Wrong. I mean, I think there's a case to be made, and I don't know that I would make it, but I think there's a case somebody could make that the Dan Henderson win is probably the most important of all of the Anderson Silva wins during that time period, right? Because it was a very real question of, hey, like, I know Anderson's doing this well over here, but Dan Henderson, two-division champ in a promotion that many thought was the best in the world in pride. Like that win has aged really well, but also in the moment, it was incredibly important for Anderson's legacy. And the first one, like Dan Henderson was able to get him to the ground. I ended the first round on top, if I recall collection.

It wasn't like he started in Anderson Silva, avoided the ground up. He was taken down. He had to work, and he finished him there in the end. And yeah, Shane, to your point, this was only the second, like, real title unification bout in MMA history. After the Hindo Rampage, light heavyweight, pride UFC, then this was, you know, pride UFC again. So, yeah, I think this is, there's a really good argument that this should make them out rush more. But there were too many spots, and I wanted to mix it up. Chris Leibn, we talked about, I do want to throw a shout out to Daniel Cormier, just because,

Because, look, this fight doesn't really belong with the Mount Rushmore in any sort of traditional sense. But this was, we kind of talked about it. Dude, what a G-ass move? To just be like, hey, coming off of surgery two days, USC 200 is in shambles. Daniel Cormier, who's one of the very best fighters in the whole wide world right now,

I'm coming off of fighting Michael Bisping and losing. I'll fight him. We're golden. Losing. Yeah. Losing with asterisks. quotation marks. Absolutely phenomenal point. But yeah, he just shows up.

And I think people don't remember that this, I won't call this fight competitive. This fight was what you'd expect it. But in the third round, he hurt Cormier. And just like, oh, my, because there was a 60 second stretch. Yeah, where one, shout out to Steve A. Mietich, who it took him two and a half fights to figure out that you punch Cormier in the body. when Anderson Silva figured out in two rounds, like, I'm just kicking him in the guts to work really well.

But yeah, there was a 60-second period where I was like, oh, my God, Anderson-Silva's about to win. This is incredible. So I just wanted to throw a quick shout out to the Daniel Kormier fight because it's an unsung gym of Anderson-Silf's career in my opinion. And it's just a shame that it wasn't for the belt. I mean, he's sticking a part of the two days. Keep it for the belt. Yeah. Yeah.

No reason it shouldn't have been for the title, but, you know, not, it is what it is. But again, it kind of adds to it. Like, he did not care about that. He just wanted to just do legendary shit. It was so freaking cool, man. It was really cool. Very, very cool. Any other honorable mentions from y'all before we move into other categories?

So I had three that I considered, if only briefly. One was the second Rich Franklin fight. I almost put that one in instead of the first, because it was just so dumb. demoralizing of like, oh, no, I'm going to do this to you the exact same way, bro. Like, this is just, we're just running back the exact same fight. And it's, oh, it was almost like more thorough because it was a little bit longer. And it was just like, God, you're really never going to beat me type of thing. Like that, that one was maybe one of the more demoralizing results I've ever seen.

It's so demoralizing because of the, the end, it like, the end happens at the, in the first round. But it just gets carried over into the second because of the time. Like at the end of the round, you're like, okay, this fight's over. We know what's up. But then Rich gets to get 60 seconds to look the Green River in the face and then come back out to his execution. It's a tough hay. It's a tough.

It's a tough. Really tough. And then also two others, obviously, and I wouldn't have ever actually thrown it in there. But to me, the Stephen Bonner fight is almost even more hilarious to watch than the Forrest Griffin fight. I look at these fights very similarly, but like Stephen Bonner was definitely not forced

who Forrest was at that point in time rest in peace Stefan but like just the aesthetics of the blatant disrespect like Anderson towards the end of his career was like really disrespectful to a lot of guys but like the overt just blatant disrespect with Stefan of just like

hey come on come on just do it do it against the fence walking back backing into the fence really tough and then the knee to the sternum like that's a tough way to go out. And then the last one, which I know we'll... I do want to throw a brief shout out to Stefan Bonner because I don't think people do enough of this in situations like this, particularly in the M.A., where he knew the deal. It's like, I'm going to fight Forrest Griffin.

Give me all of the steroids. I'm going to burn through, I am going to burn through this piss cup and I don't care. Load me up on the gear because it doesn't matter if it gets taken away later. If I can beat Anderson Silva that lives forever. Shouts to you, Stefan Bono, that's a pro move. Not only

that, but he was just game in the fight. He also probably knew at a certain point like I'm completely outgunned here. He probably had that same moment that Rich Franklin had where you can see his eyes go, oh shit, like there's levels to this game, like fuck around and find out. And he still

was Stefan Bonner. Like he was trying to march forward, trying to get his boxing in, and Anderson Silva just wasn't having it. But Stefan, at no point in that fight was just like, yeah, I'm just going to cruise as this guy

playfully like beats me up. He tried to win and just without out. I'm not going to Patrick Cote this. Yeah, I'm going to get his face. And we've seen people take that tact against Anderson when you're like, oh, okay, I'm in here with a savant and I've lost

and I'm just going to ride it to the end. Stephen Bonner was like, all right, I'm going to go for broke because that's what I'm here for. that's what the UFC's paying me to do. And Anderson Silva was the perfect dance partner for that. Also, that knee, the subtlety of that knee of just how perfect it was. I remember talking to Stefan about it for a story I ultimately did about Anderson's 16 fight run. And that quote always stuck out to me. I have it right in front of me. He said, he weaved that knee right in there.

If it were an inch higher or inch lower or if I hadn't just taken a breath in, then I could have survived it. But he weaved it in there perfectly. If he threw that knee 10 other times, nine of them would have been an inch to the right or the left or higher or lower, but it's the perfect shot in the perfect time. And in my defense, while he was wailing on me on the ground, I know I was fetal. That's all you can do. But I was trying to pick off the shots that he was hitting me with on the ground.

And I just remember thinking, ha, what an idiot. Thank God he's hitting me in the head right now because my body is killing me. I love it. I love Stefan. I wish he was still with this, but incredible. That's an exceptional quote. Great stuff. You had one more, Shane, for you.

just briefly because I don't know that we're going to talk about it anywhere else but man outboxed Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at like age 50 almost like in Mexico like that will never not be impressive to me no matter how much of a fuck up

that guy is. So I had to throw that at that. Yeah. I'll step on a future category for me. This was my number one who the fuck is that guy. Not because I don't know who Julius Cesar Chavez Jr. is, but because if you told me in 06 in 2010, in 2015, Anderson Silva is going to not only

box who the Seza Shafas Jr., he's going to win, I would have laughed in your face. Like, that's, no, MMA fighters are very bad at boxing, and then that's the world we live in. It was super weird and incredibly dope. And so, yeah, shouts for that one. Shouts for that one. Guy, Rick, any other honorable mentions that you want to get to here, or should we move on to the next category?

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Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. All right. our next category, the I'm not impressed by your performance category. This is for the low point.

The name says it all, really. I'm not impressed by your performance. I think, you know, you could go a lot of ways. When we do this category, a lot of times it ends up being the loss that leads to the downfall. You know, like, all right. You know, Fador was undefeated for a decade and then Verdoom tapped him. I don't, I have come over. the years to decide that I, I just don't care about the back end of Anderson's career,

the, you know, 12 fights where he lost and or won type, not concerned with him. I think there are some choices here. I went rogue. I went all the way rogue on this category, gentlemen. I want to talk, because I want to talk about Rio Chonin. I want to talk about it right now. And I got to be honest, I don't know that Rio Chonin's going to get a damn. And if it does, it won't be for like 12 years.

That's the sickest shit I've ever. ever seen in my life. The flying he, like the flying scissor heel hook is the coolest thing ever. And I know that that's not an Anderson highlight, but man, being part of that is sick. There is one submission in the history of MMA that I think is arguably cooler. And it's Demetrius Johnson and the flying arm bar. But this shit broke Sherdog forums when it happened. And still, for like years after when people be like, Anderson's great, who can beat him? the gag was just Rio Chonin is the dude who could beat him.

It wasn't his best, like, it's probably not his worst performance. Di Jikazei Tkasi fight, like in pride is pretty bad. He was arguably winning this fight, but I just, this is just sick. And I just wanted to make sure we got mention of Rio Chonin doing the most cartoon shit I've ever seen to the greatest fighter of all time. It's the best. This feels like a half credit, right? It's like a half not impressed and a half impressed Rio Chonan.

Shonan, like, you get the, you get the credit. But yes, I remember, like, on the Shurdog forums, like, Chonin by submission and, um, Hickson, Hickson by Armbar were the two, like, everybody's just, uh, saying that. So yeah, it was definitely a thing. Who could be an Anderson Silva. It's just a picture of Chonan. Yeah. Yeah. And there's that one picture from the, from the downward angle into the ring that they just show every time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. remember with one of the THQ games, I think it was THQ UFC 3, Undisputed 3, where maybe they had the pride mode in that. That's by far the best UFC video game that's

ever been made, by the way. Yes. There was a flying scissor heel hook. But that was all that was like one of the that was like a flying scissor heel hook in that game. And all I did for my creative character was I won like 30 fights by flying scissor heel hook in like a minute. Because the entry on it was so dumb. It's awesome. And I got to say this is, if you or a fighter listening to this or just somebody in the, you know, coach whatever. One, glad to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Two, God love I'm a monstrous fan of Iminari. A bunch of really shitty fighters try eminari roles all the time for no real reason. I think Matt Hughes' kid tried an Iminari role in his pro debut this past weekend. Nobody's out here trying the flying scissor heel hook. And that, I mean, that just means the youths don't. know. You guys got to get out here. If Alexander Volkanowski comes out and Flying Scissor here at himarkochev at USC 294 this weekend, I'll never say a bad thing about the man again. We need more of this in life. And so that is my, I'm not impressed. I think

there are other more obvious answers, but I couldn't find another place to put Rio Chonin, and Rio Chonin deserve this moment in this podcast. So, Shaheen, let's go to you. What's or I'm not impressed by the performance award. So, I mean, I think there's two obvious answers for this, right? One sort of in the middle of it all, in the middle of the stuff that matters. And that's obviously the weird blips we got with the Damian Maya, Patrick Cote, Tala's latest stretch where Anderson Silva was maybe unhappy with some things, maybe a little bored, maybe just didn't care too much about fighting these type of opposition

and was just kind of doing stuff in the octagon for 25 minutes in all those fights or at least 15 with Cote before the injury and just not really caring about giving us a good show, which led to one of the wildest Datoid interviews you'll ever see with our good friend Ariel Hawani and Abu Dhabi where Dana White just went scorched with Earth and Anderson. I think that's probably the best answer for this, but also you could throw in the post-prime, losing so many fights, keep going at age 40, 45, 48, losing to Jake Paul, all of sort of that we've seen afterward. But all of that is postscript to me.

That doesn't matter nearly as much for me. I guess the not impressed would be that Maya Talas later is Patrick Cote stretch. Yeah, this is the one I expected to get the most votes. Maya, I mean, just famously Dana White, just being like I'll never employ him again as he's your number one pound for pound fighter and active middleweight champion post-maya and promising to make it up to the fans like just insane stuff gee uh was damien maya your i'm not impressed by a performance award did you have something else no not not damien but tal is latest i mean for me like that's that's the worst that that was surreal i mean damia

most forgettable fight certainly yeah yeah i mean the damia may a fight and so it was was scheduled to fight Vitor Belforn on that card. And I think Damien took the fight on 10 days, 10 days notice, stuff like that. So you're going from Victor to Damien, like two completely opposite fighters. I'm not excusing Anderson for what he did in that fight. It was bizarre and was horrible. But at least you can say, let me, you're going for a striker to a pure grabber. So, okay.

But the title of these fights was bizarre. Like Anderson Silva, I think he laid him at immediate. that he didn't like wanted to hurt him because Talis was was training with under Pettenera who used to coach

Cheneyson early his career I mean that's just bizarre like I didn't want to hurt him I mean that's that's surreal and that performance was forgetable and that I'm getting bored

just to talk about that fight that was horrible I mean, maybe Rich Franklin should have trained with Andre Pettanaris in his That might have been the pro move for him Rick, what about you? Where's your I'm not impressed going? I got to be honest. I'm honestly shocked.

I thought this would be like unanimous. And I, there's no part of me that thought that there would be a different answer than who the guy who we just lavish praise upon. testing positive for anabolic steroids in the middle of his career. And blaming tie dick piss. I had that a close second, but I'm going to talk about that later. So that's why I didn't get into relation as well. See, he knows how the game is played.

Because I originally had that as my number one because it jumped off the page. You know, and I thought, oh, we could do the Chris Wyman thing. I was like, I don't really care about the Chris Wyden was. And then I was like, I can put this one in a separate category that I have. a much better answer for. So, tell me why drugs are bad and why you support USADA and all its endeavors. No, see, funny enough, I'm actually much closer to the side of the ledger that everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want.

And there is no such thing as a clean sport. And trying to get to that outcome causes more problems than it's worth. But that's for a different show and a different podcast potentially. but I do remember just feeling like Anderson Silva was this like bastion of martial arts, right? Like he was he was the guy when you think of not just like MMA fighting and not just UFC. When you think of martial arts, because all of the allusion to Bruce Lee and him talking about martial arts and feeling like more of an artist than necessarily like a brutish fighter. and then it just kind of became like there was a smack of reality like even him even the guy that we all praise and feel like is this like different type of dude may have been cheating or may have

it may have been taking something to enhance his performance and then on like that's one level and again as I said I'm not believe me I'm not Mr. Authority when it comes to punishments for for PDs and things like that but that's one level and then on top of that to layer on, hey, by the way, this was because I took some dick pills from Thailand. Like that part really like took it over the top from me as like the biggest departure from what I expect and think of Anderson Silva. It was almost like it was a little bit like pathetic.

Like it was this guy who I, who I worshipped who was like an idol. And it was like, yeah, I got caught with like this. And I was like, oh, damn. Like I don't know if I can think of this man exactly the same way ever again. and it completely changed things from that point on. But yeah, that was the moment for me that I was like, oh, man, this is real and this is weird. You're just bummed he lost out on coaching tough Brazil four. Yes.

I remember that happening and being like, this is the best outcome. Like they pulled him from coaching tough against Shogun who he wasn't going to fight anyway. But like, you know, you can't coach tough, which is incredible. incredible. Look, I'm not here to say you wrong, Rick. That seems reasonable. And I know that there were, I remember the discourse after it of this is disqualifying Anderson Silva from goat conversations forever or what have you. I pay no heed to any of that. And I'm going to, I'm going to flip this around on you because there was a specific reason I removed this from being my, I'm not impressed by your performance. Because let me tell you, buddy, At the time, sure, ridiculous, maybe a bit dumb. As it's aged, I got to say the absolute balls to say it wasn't a tainted supplement. It's not my monster energy drink got spiked, horse meat from Mexico. Gas station dick pills are why I failed this drug test.

That is a high sex juice. That is a ballsy maneuver right there. Because one, it's kind of smart because, look, I don't think. you know, once upon time was an attorney, and I recognize that, like, arguments like these aren't, like, real, but they're great internet arguments to be like, buddy, I got to say, if that was the actual, like, thing, it has to be true, because otherwise I wouldn't say it. If I was, if I was just on the gas, I would just make up supplement. I wouldn't make up gas station sex pill, tie secret sex juice or whatever.

This is, I totally believe him. I absolutely buy it because that's too ridiculous of a lie to make up. And if it is a lie, this is the most incredible I've ever heard. And I got nothing but respect for this one. So that's why I straight up removed it from this category for that reason. So I'm glad someone had it here. I do have it in a future category. And on to future categories.

The Who the Fuck is That Guy Award? I tipped my hand I picked Julio Cesar Sávez Jr. I do have a list of kind of other guys to make mention of here but Guy let's go to you who the fuck the fuck is that guy award for weirdest most surprising

opponent that Anderson Silva faced in his career who the fuck is that guy? I have to choose Fabrizio Camois just super weird right super weird like who ends up in the UFC like years decades later

as a lightweight. It just makes no sense that he just started his career fighting Fabrice Morango in Brazil like I think it was a one-night tournament or stuff like that. It just makes no sense. Very,

I wanted to keep my list down, but he was on the alternates of my list. It was like, that's super odd. And then I kind of remembered that they talked about it when Kamoy made his way into the UFC later,

but it's just like, yeah, that's a very, very weird one. to look back and be like that was his second career fight was against Kmoi. Heen, you reacted impressively here. What's, what is this reaction about? I'm stunned. I'm stunned at what I'm listening to. There was like an obvious answer for this category,

like a much more obvious than normal answer for this category. One, Nick Diaz and Tito Ortiz in boxing are just very weird, the fact that he fought either of those. I straight up forgot Tito happened and that happened like two years ago. And I already forgot that happened. Him being a good point. Yeah. Him just crushing T-Dortes and boxing is one of the happiest.

Just 20 seconds of my life. That was so fun to watch. But what are we talking about? Lee Murray. The answer is Lee Murray. The dude fought Lee Murray. The dude was the last guy to fight Lee Murray. Two years after they fought,

Lee Murray was in a Moroccan prison for like one of the biggest heists of all time. And he's been there since. Yeah, but here's the problem with the Lee Murray thing. Like, I get what you're saying. I'm not saying you're wrong. Like, I think, you know, the people listening probably would be like, yeah, Lee Murray seems like a good answer for this. The issue is I'm too deep in the forest.

I'm in the weeds of this. And my exposure to Lee Murray is Moroccan prison and fighting Anderson Silva. And so it's just like pretty high on the list of things I think about and remember from Anderson's career as being the last to fight Lee Murray before that happened. So it's not a, it's not a dude. I didn't remember. This is super weird. It's just like a, that's funny.

He's, he felt. Is it objectively the most bizarre and interesting opponent on his resume, though? I mean, he's objectively the most bizarre and interesting person. Yes, but the totality of it, not to my taste, which is what I'm saying. I think we're going to have a lot of, I'm going to have a lot of variety here. Eric, are you, are you on Shaheen bandwagon? This isn't a Lee Murray. No.

Lee Murray has a, has a showtime special. Yeah, like there's a multi-part showtime documentary about this man. This is obvious. That's crazy. But at the time it made sense. The timing of it, it made sense. And I feel like some of these, this will probably be true for my answer, but I also thought this was very obvious and thought this would be the answer that everybody had.

He fought YouTube boxer Jake Paul. Like, this dude is a freaking Disney channel kid. If Anderson Silva is not your goat, which I can understand, he's in the goat conversation. He fought a Disney channel kid. Like, there's nothing more bizarre that will ever be uttered in. history than Anderson Silva fought Jake Paul. 20 years from now, the fact that Anderson Silva

had left the UFC in acrimony and there was unrest and Jake Paul was on the rise will kind of be erased and we will remember that Jake Paul fought Anderson Silva. And that to me is the most bizarre thing. I actually try to ignore that that if I happen. I think that's the reason why.

That was real. That actually happened. That was not a fever dream. Like Jake Paul and Anderson Silva fought. I actually agree with Rick in this regard. Like when I'm 80 and on my deathbed, knock on wood, that, you know, that's when my deathbed comes. I think that that probably will be the weirdest thing to recollect me. Like, Anderson Silva fought Jake Paul, and it was the biggest fight of the year. It was just like that's, that's a pretty weird one.

But like Guy, I like to not think of that because I got hoodwinked in that fight. I got hoodwinked. I thought Andy was going to win, and then he didn't, and he looked really old. And then he just getting knocked down in the last round was so disheartening that I tried not to think about that. He was like a 50-year-old man. I don't know. Like that week gave me one of my favorite memories with Anderson ever. Because like, I'll shorten the story, but like we were trying to talk to Anderson all week.

That fight was in Arizona. And his media availability was very weird that whole week. And so every day was like, oh, you'll get Anderson tomorrow. You'll get Anderson tomorrow. And finally it came time to for way-end days. And it was like, okay, you'll get Anderson before Way-ins. Didn't get him. Okay, you'll get Anderson after Williams.

Didn't get him. And then we hear that Anderson is leaving the building. He's done. He's done doing media for the week. And we made a big stick. But, okay, well, we need to talk to Anderson. Like, you did not. We have not spoken to the main player this whole week.

And so they essentially coerced Anderson into doing a quick scrum in the bowels of the arena like back back behind the arena they pulled him off of his bus and he was he was so he was just like standing in front of his bus outside at night in the Arizona desert talking to like a few of us and it was one of the wildest interview experiences I've ever had because I have talked to Anderson countless times over the years I've covered almost all of his fights in the UFC to a certain extent like a lot of them at least I've spoken to the man a ton of times I had never seen this side of Anderson before because Anderson is so nice. He's so kind. He's so happy to talk to you. He's so, oh, you're my friend. Respect. Everything like that. The faces Guillermo is making is fun.

But at least for in my experience, that's been talking to him. But this time was war mode Anderson. It was Anderson with the switch flipped. It was Anderson after all of the bullshit's over and we're about to get in a fight with this very disrespectful kid. And because Jake Paul just like yelled in his face or something like that too. And that was the first time I'd ever seen like actual, oh, you're the fucking UFC champion Anderson. Like you're the dude who was like staring down and doing all these guys and doing all these incredible things. And I was staying right in front of him for it. And just it doesn't translate you like you watched the interview now. The intensity that was writing off that man does not translate unless you were right there in front of them. But for the few

of us that were there, it was like me, Jose, Jose Young's, Oscar Willis, a few others. We left that interview buzzing in it's like in a weird degree that you never really do with a lot of these interviews because it was just like oh my god like we just got like a little taste of what this fucking dude was like when when you're actually fighting this guy like what the actual like switch flipped war mode intense anderson silver was like and it was one of the coolest experiences in my life just to feel that energy radian off that man of like i don't give a fuck what you're asking me i don't want to talk to you like i just want to punch you in the face right now type of thing to feel that energy from anderson was one of the coolest things ever

So you just told that whole story about how you talk to him all these times and you had this moment. And when it came to this question, no part of you was like, it's the most bizarre thing ever that that moment that I shared with that man after 15 moments prior was about Jake Paul. There was no part of you that thought, holy shit, this is the weirdest reality I've ever experienced. I mean, it's certainly, it's my number two, but Lee Murray is Lee Murray, man. the man from the bank like one of the biggest bang ice of all time this is crazy I do want to piggyback off what you just said there

Shahid because this isn't my story but I do remember that fight week and sort of the prep to that because one of the great this is this is from you know the wonderful E Casey Lydin obviously works with us and in the buildup to that

Casey you know Esther was taking photos doing the whole photo thing and doing the whole photo thing and doing the pre-fight face off photos. They don't face them off together. It's not like,

all, we're going to do this pre-fight stuff when we get them there. It's, you know, they're taking them sort of in the aggregate. And Casey got called to service to step in opposite Anderson Silva

for these photos. And coming off of that, we were on a podcast or we were just shooting the shit or whatever. He was like, dude. Anderson turned it on. Like he did the, you know,

were there taking photo? I'm just sending it across from him. And he like, went war mode and holy shit it was terrified utterly terrifying yeah so uh and that that was always a very fun story um from that whole event for for me so shouts to casey i just stole your story because it felt like a great place to put it a couple of honorable mentions for this that i wanted to shout out just for me personally i think if i was sticking fully true to the original intent of this category i would have selected jeremy horn because straight up if you would have

asked me a week ago before I was prepping on this, did Anderson Silva ever fight Jeremy Horn? I would have bet my left leg and several of my future unborn children that that fist fight never happened. And apparently it did. So I didn't go back and watch it. Can't tell you the thing about it. But he fought Jeremy Horn, which in South Korea, of all places,

which is the other super weird part of this, don't know why that happened there, but so it goes. also Holon Zhukau-Karnero this one is just personal for me because Zhukau was my jiu-jitsu coach for several years I trained with him here in Atlanta

and every day coming in to think he had a photo post that fight kind of in his office so shouts to there and I did it was it was very cool because that was like back in Brazil you know at Mecca something or whatever and then

I just want to shout out Alexander Otsuka because we're never going to mention him again. But Alex, man, what a hero. Just if you were deep into Pride, just a staple jobber for Pride FC back in the day, man has a 5 and 13 career record. And it's all hitters. Just they brought this dude in to lose to Marco Hulas, Henzo, Igor, guy Metzger, Vanderlay, Andrew.

and ninja just hitters that he lost to all of them and just just shout out to a guy who knows his role he's he's filling out the cards doing his job taking the else as necessary so um he beat bob sap though the one that matters do you know how he beat bob sap because i know that off the top of my head i i'm only looking at it here on uh on wikipedia but i see i see it's disqualification via illegal slams. Bob Sapp was decued for slamming this incredible.

And now I want Shahin to interview with Sukha. I want that to the story. Dude, I would absolutely watch it because it's been fun like seven prides. It was just like, all right, we got to get somebody in there against Vanderlay.

Go die. And he kept on love for it. He kept me like, yep, I'm in. You need guys like that, though. He's great. You do. That's great. It's an important role, and I respect him immensely for it.

So I wanted to shout him out here. Next category, the Randolplex Award. This is for the Best Single Career Highlight. And, you know, Rick, Heen, Gee. This is why I said, I found ways to kind of talk about fights that probably should be on Mount Rushmore's and other places. I love using the Randolplex category to kind of not talk about the same fight over and over again. And this is where, to me, the obvious answer is Vitor Belfort for this one. I mean, that is the highlight that's going to live on forever.

The front kick, the iconic image. We talked all about it. I put that as my number one here with a very, very strong contending number two. But this is one of the few categories that I did feel that it was such a clear frontrunner. I just want to ask, is this, did you all pick Vitor Belfort for this fight? Ooh, Rick. Oh, two head shakes. Wow, Guy.

Did you pick Vitor Belfort for the Randolplex Award? I mean, I have a long list here. Oh, you've got a lot of them. Vito is one of them, but there's a lot of it. Okay. Is Vitor the number one of them? Who's your number one, Guy? Yeah, Vito's number one.

Okay. Well, it's so complicated because this man's a human head, real. So there's probably like four or five right answers. Okay. I'm going to assume that I know who Rick and Heen picked then because my number two, I think is another very, very good answer, a great frontrunner for this. And it's Tony Frickland at Cage Rage. Is that the answer for you, Rick and Shaheen? No, but that's a good shout. That's the arm balk elbow that his coaches didn't want him to throw. How did nobody pick that? I felt bad at not picking that. It's the most ridiculous, like, He literally saw that from Ongbach and then just practiced it against the pillow with his wife holding the pillow for night after night. In a title fight, just yolo because this dude can't hurt me.

Boom. Like, I wanted to pick that for number one. And I would have, except for I had to put Vitor here so I could free up space on my Rushmore. So it's my number two here. I am now fascinated. Rick, what did you pick for your number one? We tip our hands already. It was, it was Forrest Griffin.

It was the complete pantsing of the guy who was the champion one fight ago in the co-man event of a pay-per-view when he just did not need to take that fight. Also on my list. Just like we can talk about why stylistically that that was going to happen, right? Like why that always was going to happen because of who Anderson Silva is and who Forrest Griffin is. But when you see it play out in person, it looked like they were not from the same species. It looked like they were, one was an alien and one was what we were used to seeing from humanity. And I, the feeling of that. And now granted, I'm, it's personal because I was sitting there in a crowd of 20,000 people.

And that changes your experience. But seeing, seeing what was possible, I didn't think going into that fight that what I had seen there was possible. And I left it thinking that there were new possibilities for MMA. Now, granted, you could say. that about that upward elbow, because I think that that is probably true of that too, that people were thinking like there's a level of striking out there that we're not accustomed to. But for me, that performance just showed like there's levels to this game and he's on a different

level than everybody else. I am not in my head. Yeah, dude, I'm not sure. I think that that's possible now, even after seeing it. I'm not in my head in vigorous agreement with everything that Eric said. For me, it was also the Forrest Griffin performance, just for everything that we've said here. Also, there is the legendary Forrest Griffin quote about this fight elevates it even further to me. And I would love to read this quote. This is Forrest on the Jason, I think he was talking to Jason Ellis pretty much a year after this fight. And someone asked him, I heard you're talking about fighting John Jones. Is that true?

And this is what Forrest says because he, Forrest's such a mensch. Fuck it. It couldn't be worse than Anderson Silva. It couldn't be worse than that, right? every fight I go into, no matter what happens, it couldn't be worse than Anderson Silva. Because that shit happened a year ago. And literally every day people ask me something about that. What happened? What happened?

You know what happened? He punched you in the chin repeatedly. And I was very confused. And I tried to punch him. I tried to punch him. And he literally moved his head out of the way and looked at me like I was stupid for doing it. He looked at me like, why would you do such a stupid thing? He looked at me like, oh, did you really think you were going to hit me?

what a stupid thing to think you slow, slow white boy. And then he punched me. And I felt embarrassed for even trying to punch him. I felt like some kid trying to wrestle his dad. Like that is unbelievable candor from Forrest Griffin to have that kind of quote about a man who just flat embarrassed him on national television. I love it. Look, it's not a bad choice here, but you can't put that in a vine.

That's too long of an ass kicking for a highlight. It takes too much time. Tony Frickland takes four seconds. It's, hey, here's my elbow in your face. Deal with it, son. I love the Vine reference. Yeah. Well, because, you know, TikToks are like long now.

You can have like five-minute TikToks or whatever. Vine, they kept it tight. They had a product that they were focused on. Get 10 seconds. Ronda Rousey's career was very vineworthy. I remember that whole thing. I'm old deal with it, Gene. Gee, you had a list.

Let's get into your list. What's the list? We've mentioned a few that seem to be on there. What else you got that jumped out at you? Yeah, it's the future one, the Forrest Griffin, the Tony Fordman. And the fourth one that wasn't mentioned was the Carlos Newton, knockout in pride. Oh, heck yeah. Flying knee, baby.

That flying knee was just nasty. It's too violent, man. It's, man, what a great shout out, because I don't have that anywhere else in this, but Carlos Newton, great fighter, catching knees to the face. anyone else have anything to mention here before we move on no i mean i think the chale one can always get a shout out and it's just because the celebration is iconic right with the with the submission fully locked in but to me it's it's either that vitor or forest you know you make a great point that i don't have here and maybe this is a little loose but i do just want to shout out chale

for chale two and uh arguably the one of the worst low lights in his history. When we talk about bad decision making, Chale Sunn and spinning back fist against Anderson-Silvin, the rematch, I mean, it's top five all time. Just an iconic moment of futility. It's top two and it's not two. I don't know. Chris Wyatman against Rockold might be number one. Chris Wyman with Rock. Ruined his career. Rockold Wyden is still really high up there. It's, it's, but it's a great argument. Just the, because at least, because in Rockhold Wyman, Wyman wasn't doing poorly. In Chale, too, Chale was a man who couldn't do anything. He was struggling futilely and desperate, and desperate people do dumb things. And that's what happened here.

But man, that and then just Anderson killing him afterwards. It's a terrific low light more than a highlight. But bears mentioning at some point. Next category, kind of stepped on it, or at least we mentioned several things about it. The right leg hospital, left leg cemetery award, this is for the best quote, by or about the fighter. It's a relatively new category. I have one answer. I only picked one. I wrote down another couple of them. I will say that the extended forest quote was sort of an honorable mention that I had listed sheen.

The one I picked is very personal to me. It won't be anybody else's answer. So I want to get to that later because it certainly won't be unanimous. Gee, what's your choice for this award? The quote I paid for this one by Anderson, and it's one that made a lot of sense here in Brazil. The timing, the movie Elite Squad was coming out. I don't think, I don't know if I'll watch it. It's a Brazilian movie that was really, really, it's a good one.

It's worth watching. And after he beat Rich Franklin the second time, the movie just came out like, in that period of time. And there's a quote in the movie, a quote in the movie, like, Nunca Seron, Jamais Seron. That's what he says in Portuguese,

and it's not translated after the interview, which means you'll never be won, never. And that's a quote from the movie, and he says that after beating, Rich Franklin. And he used that quote again

after bidding Yushen Akami in the rematch. real. That's cold. So that's that's this de-quotes when I think about Anderson Silver. Like, you'll never be like, you'll never be one if you're fighting Anderson Silver. Dude, that's, that's some cold-blooded shit right there. Damn. Also, that straight up sounds better in Portuguese, too. That's a much better one. Heen, what do you got? So I had two, one from Anderson and one about Anderson. The one from Anderson, I think, is maybe more of like an MMA fighting thing more than anything, because I think

we just still use this just in our parlance when we talk to each other on Slack. I just always really liked I back when he announced himself back. I back straight to the point, broken English. I back is normal. It's normal. It's normal. Is normal is the one that I would have. It's my number two.

He's normal? You will still see I back and is normal just consistently on the M&A. fighting slack for most of us. Plus Tommy Toehold made a career out of doing Iback and he's normal in cartoons, basically. So I always liked that, but then the one that really stuck out to me, obviously the Forrest Griffin one was a close second. But it was for that same piece I mentioned earlier when I, the Silva 16, when I talked to all Anderson Silva's opponents.

And Chris Levin told me this story of his post-fight experience with Anderson. And it always just shook me in a way of like, this is just a. a different world than all those commenters really understand. This is Chris talking about his fight with Anderson Silva. He hit me with a combination and I went down. The thought crossed my mind. I really should just stay down right now. I know that getting up is not going to do me any good, but, you know, I wanted to give him a clean win. So I stood up. Good guy, Chris, as always. And as I turned towards him, I think that's when he landed a flying knee to my face, which was kind of the coup de grace. Fast forward to the next night. I'm with my stepmom and we're in the heart. We're in the

hard rock. They're re-airing my fight against Anderson Silva. I look up and I go, man, I can't believe I got knocked out so bad tonight. She goes, Chris, that wasn't tonight. That was last night. The next night, I still thought it was after the fight. That's how bad he knocked me out. I love post-fighters. That's fantastic. Rick, what do you got? Yeah, so my number one was that forest quote about the Anderson knockout. But I would be remiss if we do not mention Chris Lieben's pre-fight comments. Which is one of the greatest moments in MMA history. If anybody's not familiar, the UFC often interviews the fighters during Fight Week and has them do direct-to-camera thoughts on the fight that they then use in a pre-fight promo

package before the fighters walk out. In Chris Lieben's pre-fight promo package, he says a lot of things actually. It was quite long. He gets to a point where he talks very specifically about Anderson Silva's level of competition, to which he says, once he gets in there with me and I knock him out, he may want to go back to Japan or somewhere where the competition is a little easier. Many highlight reel on social media has been showing that cut to Anderson Silva ruining his life and showing a fuck around and find out type of thing. In contrast, because that was one of the all-time blunders in thinking that Anderson-Silva was not going to be able to hang. I just always love the go back to Japan.

I'm eating his shots and throwing back. I just love to go back to Japan where the competition is easier. Or somewhere else. Like anywhere where the competition is easy, Anderson-Silva will fit right in. So that was one. And then... Was Levin still the cat-smasher at this point, or had he been Crippler yet? I think he was Crippler by then.

I'll make the UFC, let him go with the cat smasher. In 2021, it's funny, this is all going to be like Chris Leibin reacting to Anderson, in 2021, he tweeted about it. I'm like, I believe it was the anniversary of Silva's debut, and there were some posts about it. In 2021, he tweeted, I think I remember this coming out party. Ha ha. They said I was going to fight some spider and they slipped in a goat. I mean, nobody's kind of like, summed up.

Wow, that's a really good question. He thought it was the spider, but he ended up with the goat. So I thought that was really... Chris Leibon's got some bangers that started with one, which was, I'm going to send him back to Japan, but it ended with quite some reflective stuff. So yeah, I think it's always been a little bit just like umbrella statement. I feel like it's always been a little bit more interesting to hear people talk about Anderson Silva than Anderson Silva to talk about himself because he doesn't really do it that much or try to expose himself that much as she has. Hines said he's talked to him a dozen times. It never felt like he really got that version that

he saw in Phoenix for the Jake Paul fight. So I've always thought people talking about Anderson Silva was way more fascinating than Silva himself. But it turns out maybe I just need to speak Portuguese because that was some cold bloodshed that he said. I mean, yes. Incredibly cold. I do have I do have one quick word two I want to throw in here. Just as an aside before you get to yours, Jett. There was another one from Forrest that I dug up. I don't know where this is from. It's from some kind of interview or pre-fight package. Someone asked him, do you want to rematch with Anderson Silva? And his response just cracked me up.

He says, fuck no, I don't want to rematch. I want to unmatch the first match. And I just, I love that. That's a really good line. So I do want to throw an honorable mention. It's normal as my number two. And then, because I didn't really want to put all of it, I just sort of generically put the Chale Sun in comments prior to the fight.

you know, the feeding a bus of carrot and the, you know, I apologize if I had any idea they had computers in Brazil. I wouldn't say that. All of this is pretty terrible, you know, if you're being real particular about it, but it's set up the fight exceeding the well. But I, this was one of the easiest categories because I say this a lot in my daily life. I think it all of the time in ways that no one else should. And, Guy, I'm happy to have you here. Because the truth of the matter is this is something that was said by Anderson Silva that I can't even confirm was said because I don't speak Portuguese, but very, very hot on the internet streets at one moment in time. It was comment by Anderson Silva while he was in the middle of embarrassing

Damien Maya and pissing off Dana White, where he allegedly just shouted at him repeatedly, where's your jiu-jitsu now playboy which is one of the funniest things I've ever fucking heard in my life and Guy translate that for me what is that in Portuguese I don't think he said that

I think it was Rafael Feijon who wasn't in his corner and he said a lot of messier things than that he said like I don't know like the word in Portuguese like he He's in English, actually, he used worse words to say that Dei Mai was shitting himself.

And the poo was just like just sliding through his leg, you know? Therjian says something like that doing the fight. The listeners won't see the hand motions that Yerme just made when he explains. that to us but it was tremendous. Like fool going down his leg, you know, doing the fight. And it's scary, things like that. No. It sounds like Féziao is the one with the elite trash talk here.

Like we need somebody to get him to talk about this. Oh, my God. I got to tell you, boys, I didn't anticipate that, but it makes me really happy. And I honestly, at least once a month, I think it. I think it all the time during fights when someone's butt scooting. or whatever. I'm like, you should just scream at him, where is you jit-soo now, Playboy? Because it's the funniest fucking thing in the world

to me. I call people Playboy all the time. And it is specifically from this quote, because otherwise I never would. But it's dismissive in the funniest fucking way. Call it someone on Playboy in Brazil, like, said from a rich family or stuff like that, which isn't fair to Damia, because he doesn't come from a rich family or anything like that.

But he went to school and he graduated graduating in journalism. So he's a playboy because he has a journalism degree. That's the thought process. I'm just thinking about the shit dribbling down his leg, if I'm being honest. I just love the geek comes into media. It's like pretty sure that's Fajal and he said like way worse stuff too. It's my, it's why I can't take it. You can't just hear that and not imagine the scenes.

Oh, it's a great mental image. It's why I can't take umbrage with the Damien Maya fight because this quote has resonated with me across life for a long time. Really underutilized top tier word to throw at the end of an insult Playboy. Like we didn't normalize adding Playboy to our insults. I, Playboy is probably my go-to-one when I have Roader. rage and I'm screaming at some shitty driver in front of me. The hell I'm doing, Playboy.

Come on! I hope the rest of you take that, if nothing else, from this podcast, because it's one of my favorite of my quotes of all time. Next category, I still got to name this thing. We're picking Nits. If you could change one thing about a fighter, about their career, what would it be? And I'm breaking rules, kids. We're doing a first.

It's never happened. nothing. I would change nothing from this man's career. Not saying it was like, you know, perfect, but I don't have the same sort of like deep emotional connection that Shaheen did to Anderson Silva. And as I went back and looked at his career, I was like, dude, you just nailed it. Everything. The walkout, the nickname, all of the fights, everything you did, it all fits into this cohesive hole that

I wouldn't change a thing for fear of it, it going a different way. So I have no nits to pick for Anderson Silva, which is the first, Shaheen, your favorite fighter of all time, if you could change one thing about his career, what would it be? The way it ended. I mean, very simple is that. Anderson Silva. You don't want him boxing Jake Paul?

I mean, that'd be fine, whatever. But I just mean, like, if he retired at a normal age when most fighters retire, we would never have a goat conversation again. Like, it would just be decided. He would be Michael Jordan. We've talked about this with other guys, right? Whether it's a Fado or a B or whoever of, like, leaving at the right time, Josie Aldo too, of like what leaving at the right time would have done for them.

There's no one in the history of this sport that leaving at the right time would have done more for than Anderson. Because if you remember right after the Stefan Bonner fight, like he was, we looked at him as a mystical being by that point. Like he was just untouchable on a level that no one else could possibly reach, had all these UFC records. And he was already like 38 years old or 37 years. old. He was already about to be a 40-year-old man. He was clearly, like, you look back now, like, if he had walked away at an age when most champions walk away, we just look at him so vastly different. And then the Chris Wydenman thing never happens, then the steroids things never happen, and the losing street never happens. Like, all of this changes in such a dramatic way that

if he had just walked away at a normal time for a normal athlete, we revere this man to such a different degree that it would be absolute heresy for anyone ever to bring up the fact that, hey, is your Alata Sanya is the new middleweight goat, like that type of thing. It would just never even come up. I mean, sure. I do have that as my T.J. Grant Ultimate Universe Award, but we'll get into that. I mean, yeah, that's fair. Rick, what do you got here? What knit are you picking with Andy? I wish, I kind of alluded to it already. I wish he, would have given us a little bit more. Like, I wish we saw the personality a little bit more.

Because you could tell, like, it was there, and we were so desperate for it. You could see how charismatic he was in everything he did, like just the performer that he was inside the cage, the dancing, the singing, the happy go lucky nature. But he very rarely kind of let out that, like, cocky, salty, arrogant kind of side. And when we saw it, it was like, oh, shit, like Anderson Silva's for real right now. And Chale obviously brought it out. of them but we got so little of it i feel like he would have been an infinitely bigger star like i feel like his his profile would have been so much more massive if he had that component and let us in a little bit and i i feel like he was guarded and you know what there's a part of me that thinks that

maybe that added to the mystique element that shaheen was talking about like he felt supernatural in a certain way and mysterious and things like that that probably helped that um in the way that it helped Fador and others. But I do feel like Anderson Silva's personality, we kind of got robbed of it a little bit because I feel like he has a lot to give in that regard. And it was right near the surface, but he never kind of let us have it. And I would have liked to have that. That's a good answer.

Dee, what do you got? I mean, I can't have two answers. The first one, I struggle with this one because Anderson Silver is image of because he, he doesn't speak English, at least most of his career. You didn't have the energy that we in Brazil used to get, especially just working in MMA media. After he became such a superstar, the way he changed as a person is something I would never get over.

Anderson was one father when he wasn't the superstar, and then he became one father-down. I mean, one person, one man that's a person, that you wouldn't interact. And then he became a superstar. He just changed and changing into being very honest to a fake person. And it's something like it was very annoying for everyone that was working covering in MMA. So I just can't get over that.

That's why when Shaheen was talking about Ernest Silva being always so nice talking to people. I was like, yeah, that's not the innocent that we know. Can I ask you something? Did that change back after he left the UFC? Was he different again? Or has he been that same person since? It hasn't changed because he doesn't do much media these days because he doesn't need to.

When he was fighting the UFC, he was obligated to do like press conference on media days and stuff like that. he was just like bizarre. I've had some interaction with him in gyms and stuff like that, like just bizarre. And so, but these days, like the last times we spoke before this boxing fights or whatever, he was okay. But that's Anderson's ever being fake while talking to the media.

So that's a weird sentiment that I have. towards an instance of all but that's not my my question that the thing that I would change it's the excuse he used for his doping situation like I'm sorry the greatest excuse I have to disagree with that that's that's just super bizarre you just broke your leg you can use you can't just say I took it fuck it I took it I broke my leg horrific I mean I Horrifically broken. Yeah. Fuck.

I thought I had to. So screw it. I took it. Instead, he's just mentioning like taint and supplements and then he's talking about dick pills and creating friends out of nowhere. Just, oh, this guy gave me this pill. This guy called Marcus Fernandes gave me pills. A person that doesn't exist.

There's no Marcus Fernandez in. Anderson Silver's life. Trust me, I tried to find that guy, and there's no Marcus Fernandez in Anderson Silver's life. So, it's just, man, just say you took it. I took it. I just broke my leg, man. Anyone, any one of us would have used that.

Anyone. Objectively, you're right. Because nobody would have been upset by it. I mean, we're all going through this with Connor right now. it's an open secret that Connor has been helping his recovery and Usada basically put him on blast and no one's upset by it because like yeah man I would do it I think anyone would so you're objectively correct I wouldn't change it for for a minute because I need gas station dick pills to be a part of the MMA lexicon it's just yeah that was there was incredible

theater to watch. That whole... It was one of the funniest things that happened in a long time. I came around and I wouldn't change it for the world. Let me... I just want to make one correction. I believe the gas station dick pills,

that's John Jones. The Thai... Ty's texture. Yeah. That's... He said that either way. This guy gave him just sex pills to use.

It's a... Marcus Fernand is this friend. He knows for a year from a guy from the gym that just gave him. Here, take this Dick pills from Thailand. They're awesome, and he just

taken. That's surreal. It's terrific, and it expertly leads into the next category, which is the Fador's sweater of Absolute Victory Award for the piece of memorabilia you would want from a fighter's career. What do you know? My choice for this

is the Thai sex pills, you know, both because it's such an important part of M.A. history and it's practical you know that's a you can i can't get a lot of use out of anderson silver shorts but who knows what can be done with this magic substance that he has i have one more honorable mention but i'll save that for for later uh heen what about you what is your piece of memorabilia from your favorite fighter of all time real quick just to revisit because i had one other uh alternative for the previous category which is the nitpicking which is just one thing that i don't think

we haven't mentioned really at all over the course of a two hour podcast, which is like the way that it ended, him just sort of being felled by his own sword against Chris Wyden of just like taking the taunting too far. Maybe just, maybe just. Yeah, but if he's not doing that is he Anderson Silva, this kind of came up in the BJ Penn. Well, that's the thing, right? You can't blame him. He got away with it for so long that he almost forgot he was human. But that's just always like the most bizarre way for a legendary run to end would just be this guy shimmying with his hands down and sticking his chin out and saying try to hit me. And so this guy's like, yeah, sure. Well, in reality, wouldn't change that at all. I wouldn't change that because that's what created all these magical

moments before that. But also in reality, it ended with the leg break in the fight after that. Because if he wins that fight, it's all excused. Yeah, it's all excused. And history is back to what it was supposed to be. So I don't think of that as the end as much as the leg break. That's fair. to me becomes the end. That's fair. That's fair. I will say, Heen, I did not think of this at all until you just said this and I'm misinterpreted what you were saying.

I'm changing my mind. If I can go back, if I could change one thing, it would be how his UFC career ended just because that was a very sad, weird thing, the forced retirement that he clearly wasn't into. And Anderson's retiring. And he's like, I might not. And certainly with this year and the way we have seen some legends of the sport get to exit the cage, you know, with.

in great memorable ways. If there's ever a dude who deserved that, it would have been Anderson. So actually, yeah, I'm going to change my answer to. Just throwing him out there against your Raya Hall on a random card with no pompous. And being like, you are leaving. You are done. Yeah.

I mean, that was rough. With all due respect, he fought Derek Brunson and Uriah Hall. And like, those fights will not be remembered at any point in history. In the greatest career. One, he beat Derek Brunson, so shouts. And it's a dub. I don't care about me. It's a dub.

And two, that's, you know, like, I'm at least okay with it. Like, that's fine. It's not great. But, you know, you get, if it had gone out with the pomp and circumstance, that would have been befitting okay. But a freaking apex car that they are forcing his retirement on is in the middle of COVID when he clearly doesn't want to be done. That's, as I think on it more.

really there are so many terrible middleweights in the world you couldn't have just given one of the terrible middle weights Anderson Silva. Abus? What was Abis doing? You could give him Abis. Or kick him out the door earlier. If this is your plan for him, like, if this is your plan to put him in fights with Derek Runson and Uriah Hall, say goodbye two fights earlier. Say goodbye right after the Kormie fight. Why do we need to do any of that? Yeah, I also would have just been fine with them just releasing him as opposed to forcibly retiring him because that that whole week was just really awkward

and I remember that being like this is super weird and not not dope I understand I can't believe I didn't think of that I understand they wanted to squeeze a little bit of juice out of him left with the Izzy fight of like hey passing of the guard okay that's fine I understand it release him after the Izzy fight and that's why Izzy's the middle way to go release because he do it then revisiting what we actually started

to talking about though the sweater of absolute victory award i went generic but i always just loved them they don't exist anymore because of the stupid uniforms the ufc wears but the yellow and black shorts iconic to me iconic absolutely iconic that's a great answer well i mean one of one of a handful of iconic pairs of shorts in mary history you know the bj pin black belts the chuckledale ice men's and anderson's black and yellows like those are i mean that's top top three top four all time shorts So a very great classic answer. Guy, what do you have for memorabilia? My answer is also one of the memories of the old times

that we didn't have done decisions in this sport where fighters could walk out to whatever they wanted. It's prior to anyone, the Michael Jackson asked you. Yes. He just ever walked out to the five Brazilian killer. Or later that night, then I have brought Alex Steebling, I think that's how to pronounce him, who gave himself a nickname Brazilian killer

because he beat six Brazilians in a row going into that fight. And he had to short this green and yellow shorts, really Brazilian killer on it. And when Emerson Silver just destroyed him, Alex gave him the shorts. So when he said to go back to Brazil with the shorts. That's a good one too. I didn't know that. That's sick. Shout to Alex Steebling. had a moment once upon a time.

That's also really cool. I did not know that at all. So that's a great one. Ricky, what do we got? I'm not a big memorabilia guy. There's really nothing that came to mind, which was odd. I was like, oh man,

what a legendary career. I'm sure there's something. And it was just like, there's nothing I really want. So I would just take like a CD of Ain't No Sunshine or something and play that. Because when I think of that song, of Anderson Silva, but there's nothing I actually need from this career. He's, he's,

Anderson Silva, you have given me enough. I am, I am satiated. I am satisfied with what has taken place I need for nothing. Let me sell you on my number two item. And, um, you're listening to this, you're going to think, wow, Jed, that's really shoehorned in there. I'm like, yep, but I also wanted to talk about this. Um, what if I could, what if I could convince you to take an object with clearly magical powers, which is the voodoo doll that he obviously has for Chris Widman, because it's super fucking weird that Chris Wydenman broke his leg, and then Chris Wyden broke his leg.

That's the weirdest shit in the history of this sport, and I don't think we talk enough about whatever hex was placed on Chris Widman from Anderson Silva that then led Wyden to shatter his own leg in exactly the same way. it's fucking unnerving and I'm never going to get over it. The dark magic. Yeah, it did lead to one of the great moments though. The reconciliation between those two is truly like a heartwarming, like special kind of thing.

It gets you right in the fields, but like that was just the wild, like the Anderson breaking is like, and we talked a little bit about it, was such a horrible experience to be a fan of and be like, oh, quit showing the replay. And then for the same thing to happen however many years later, basically exactly to Chris Wybin like, dude, Uriah Hall, watch out. It's coming for you because apparently that's what's going on here. It's like final destination. There's a plan. There's a design that kind of like flows down. Shout out to Devin Salah. Why do you think Uriah Hall retired, man?

He's trying to break the chain. Look, a bar fight then. Watch out, man. I can't break your leg in boxing. but I mean, you can, but it would be harder. But it could be done. Next, category. The Habib Tony Award for the fight that never happened that you wanted to see.

I think there is one extremely obvious answer. I think you could have a lot of fun with this category. You know, you could mix it up. The obvious answer, George St. Pierre. And that's the fight that got kind of mentioned the most. They were concurrent champions, two top fighters in the world. still I am legitimately sad that that fight never happened. I think that that fight would have been a triumph for MMA in the sport.

But I don't know, the further away we get from it, the less sad I am, mainly because I'm very, very satisfied with both of their careers. So that just would have been, feels greedy to ask for that. But I got another list of a couple of things here, but I want to throw it to you guys. One, everyone kind of nodded. It seems like we all are probably in agreement on the GSP one. but what else do you have an open floor here for who Andy didn't fight you would have liked to see? So obviously John Jones, right? Because that was also the other side of that coin.

I never want to. I would be in a shit about that fight. Okay, wow. I never particularly cared about that fight, but I know that was one that some people cared about. And the UFC tried very briefly to get done. People that hate Joe. And it's a civil, of course.

Yeah. If you're a civil, you want you to fight John John. I'm with Guy all day on that one. He fought Daniel Correa. I'll take that. That'll be fine. That'll be fine for that. I was way more interested in John versus Izzy than I ever was John versus Anderson.

Same. The one that stands out to me, though, and is one that we actually like nearly almost gotten, like, kind of could have gotten if things had broken the right way. Yeah, we almost got, before Anderson Silva was Anderson Civil, we almost got Anderson Silver versus Carlos Condit in the finale. In the final of the Rumble on the Rock, Walter Maltrow. tournament number two on my list for rumble in the rock let's go also we talked about this in the carlos conned episode if we had an Anderson silver versus carlos conden in the final of that hawaii tournament before either those dudes were somebody oh my god would have just been such a cool thing to

look back on a cool youtube video to watch nowadays but alas he got disqualified against ushenokami he didn't get it do rumble in the rock is already like a legendary event in deep mama circles because you just think what that fight would have been like Anderson's obviously better than Carlos Condit was but Carlos one of the all-time great chins could just get thumped on that fight would have been sick that fight. Rummel and the Rock would be just this mythical event that on par with almost nothing else. So it's a great answer sheen. Anyone else have any others to mention or I'll throw out a list here.

I have as mold is here. Okay. It's of course, GSP is the number one. Of course. But, Fedor Emilianenko. That was also on my list as well. Because he's a headweight, but it's not really a heavyweight. If you wanted to say, he could go down to 205.

And Emerson Silver was a middleweight that he's just a light heavyweight that can make 185. So they could easily, Anderson, because he could easily move up to headway to fight him. And that would have been amazing. That was a time that they were both number one after, after Pride died, then Fido was fighting affliction and promotions like that. And Anderson was the number one. That could easily be done. Unfortunately, it never happened.

And two other fights. Hold up on this because I want to on the Fado one. I remember that. And I remember Fadre Randy had a lot of steam. And it was just, I was never that into Fadre Randy as much less so than other people. But I always thought Fador Anderson would be like a really fun style matchup. And then even years later, Fador's retirement. at the beginning of this year, I was like, man, just sign Anderson.

Just do, instead of doing Bader again, like I know why you're doing it, it would just be way cooler to do Fador Anderson for, because then we could get a real retirement for Anderson instead of the kind of UFC one he got. It could be a celebration. Fadour, and then that'd just be really, really cool. So Fadour Anderson is one that I absolutely have on my list. And two others that I have, I guess, teammates. That's why they didn't happen.

It was Paulo Filio, who was like a monster. And Pride and W.C. Of course, his career took a turn, a lot of issues outside of the cage. He was incredible. He was a fantastic fighter. And his style, like his judo and his jiu-jitsu would have been a nightmare for Anderson Silva. That's that fight. People that watched them fight, then train together,

would just celebrate thinking about that fight if they weren't friends. Some people say that Ernestilva wanted to be friends with Polofidio just to avoid the fight. Smart. Yeah. And the other one was Jacker & Sosa, who was the Strike Force champion, lost his title to Look Rockhold, controversial one. And they went to the UFC, but never really got to fight for a title. and Enososiva was

I don't think Gansom was the champion anymore but that fight could easily be done and wasn't because they were training together in Rio as well so those are two fights that would have been incredible but would never even close to happen because of their relationship

I didn't have maybe I would have had Jacre on like a broader list but a few years a great one I also had a guy that he repeatedly called friends on my list that he said he wouldn't fight and that I was always really interested in a Leo Tomochita matchup I know that never was going to happen

but that would have been a dope fight to watch or to watch that fight particularly at the peak of their powers that would have been a really really fun matchup so I think and sure it's a lot of great names I was just saying it's Anderson Silva you could pick anybody who he didn't fight and they probably would have been awesome if you're picking like high-end guys from that period of time.

So totally get it. Coming down the home stretch here, the TJ Grand Alternate Universe Award, I already mentioned mine, and it's a retirement and just sort of what that would have looked like. Because she and I agree with you. A couple of years ago, I think, on the MMA hour, Anderson said that he had intended to retire if you beat Chris Widman.

You know, take that with a grain of salt. Who knows what would have happened had that night gone differently. but if he had retired prior to that fight, prior to Stefan Bonner, which I think would have made a ton of sense after he vanquishes chailed the second time and there are no questions. But if he beats Weidman that night and retires, I agree with Euseen. I don't think we're having a goat conversation. Maybe we are. Maybe John Jones has earned his way into that in the broader public space there. But he beats Weidman.

He has all of the records. doesn't have any of the steroid stuff that comes along later, any of the losses. So that's my alternate universe and just kind of what that would have looked like from a legacy perspective. But what about y'all? Open floor here on this one. Anything jumping out for you. Yeah. What if he had fought GSP? Like, obviously that's a tie to the previous category. I only had one answer.

As much as I love Jockeret, the only fight I would have cared about for Anderson Silva was GSP. they were both in their primes and you talked about how if he had left after Wydman it would have solidified him as Goad and maybe the conversation stops if he had fought GSP and won then I don't think

like the conversation would have even been more dead because he would have taken out the other guy in that era who was in that running and man that was the one for me so yeah what if they had finally made GSP. Yeah. Instead of GSP fighting Johnny Hendricks, he just fights and Anderson fighting Chris

Widman, they just fight each other and call it careers. Yep. It ought to be a plus, A plus stuff. And mine was, what if he never comes back from the leg injury? I mean, he lost Chris Wyman, but you can say he was just playing around and got caught. And then they rematch, he breaks his leg, he breaks his leg, and that comes back. And he's a goat. He just got caught.

And he was joking around and then he breaks his leg and never comes back. It's okay. No one would have blamed him. He never comes back from that leg injury. Everyone would be like, yeah, that makes total sense. He's almost 40 and look what happened to him. He loses drugs death and then loses 18 fights in a row. So I'll come back.

Okay. Shaheen, are you on board with where we all kind of seem to be? Yeah, I mean, it's what I said earlier. It's what if he walks away at a normal age when most of these guys walk away? It's such a different legacy conversation. I also throw in one, though. What if he kind of goes out there in Phoenix and styles on Jake Paul and gets some sort of highlight real first round knockout of Jake Paul?

What would that world be like? Don't. I don't want to live in. Would we still be dealing with the Verizon? But that never happened. I don't know what. He'd be fighting Tommy Fury, and I don't need that in my life. I'm good.

Good without Andy versus Tommy Fury. Anderson Silva against Dylan Dennis. Sign me up for that. I will watch that tomorrow. Well, I don't. I don't want to give... I don't want to speak into existence. Just stop.

I also, before we move on to our next category, I don't know how none of us mentioned this. And it's a pretty big miss on us from the Habib-Toney spot of... It still could happen, I guess, theoretically. Roy Jones, Jr., you know, in the boxing. That's a good call. He talked about it forever.

I don't think we can put versus a clone because we don't have the technology to make that happen at this moment in time. But Roy Jones Jr., maybe it still does happen, you know. And I hate to admit it, I'd buy the pay-per-view. I'll watch 50-year-old Anderson versus Roy Jones Jr. in a boxing match. I'll watch that now, but I would have wanted to see it many years ago

and it would have been compelling. I'll still watch it. The same way I watched Vanderley Silver versus Chuck Liddell five years after it was at its best. You know, just because the expiration dates passed doesn't mean that milk is unusable. It just maybe isn't as good as it once was. Boarding for Flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time.

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if you're adding to your own skill set, what do you want? Easiest category for me of the entire day. Well, second easiest. You've got the easiest one coming up. I want the head movement. I mean, you could take the striking as a whole or whatever. I try to narrow it down a little bit more.

And if at any point in my life, I can do what Anderson Silva did to Forrest Griffin to anyone, doesn't have to be a professional fighter. If I could do it against, like, a drunk person in a bar fight, or any human being at all. just do that, that kind of Willie Pepp nonsense. I mean, that's it.

That's all I need to do. I can die a happy man if some guy can swing 12 shots on me and come up with air. Give me the head movement. Ghee, what do you want from Anderson-Silva's fight game? Head movement is a great answer, but I went with his chin. When his head movement didn't work and people land a punch on him, It just did nothing on him. It was the surreal.

His team was incredible. Exceedingly underrated because of the rest of his defense. And so I don't think people registered that. But yeah, I mean, for 15 years, you just couldn't hurt the man. If you managed to get lucky enough to land a shot on him. So it's a great answer. Heen, what do you got? I think all of these are the right answers.

The clinch game was one that stood out to me, just the Muay-clinch, be able to control a man like that. That would be arguably the greatest in the history. Yeah, it would be pretty nice. But also for me, just the fluidity, right? The creativity, the fluidity, the like waterness of his game is really one of one in that respect. Like we've seen guys come since who have very sophisticated striking styles, whether it's an Izzy or an Alex or whoever you want to throw out there.

But just he was the OG. He was the original of just that style that you could not emulate and you never knew what he was going to do because he was so fluid and creative out there. Ricky. Yeah, it's like a variation of everything that's already been said. The timing, the accuracy, like just his ability to place shots, like nothing before or since. Speaking of placing shots, because we've talked about this fight probably more than any of the other fights, the Forrest Griffin fight, can we all just take a moment to recognize the kill shot in that fight?

because it's the funniest thing. It's just the lightest tapping boop as Forrest. Forrest has no answers, no options, he's confused. And he just kind of comes forward and then gets just sat down with just the babiest hand. Just the baby's tap of go, be done here. And he collapses as if he is hamming it up in a like a middle school stage play. But he's not. Like that's just actual physical reaction.

just the most expertly time shot. It's incredibly funny, and I wanted to make sure that we noted that. That's the thing about Anderson Silva, though, the timing and the accuracy was the thing, right? Before Cona McGregor was making that quote famous and talking about precision, Anderson Silva's power all came from just being able to put the shot

exactly where it needed to be and knock you out. Exactly when it needed to be there. When it needed to be there on the money. He was incredible. Our next category is the Brad Ims Fun with Stats Award. This category is fun stats, and it's named after Brad Ims, the Hillbilly Heartthrob, heavyweight former ultimate fighter finalist, who I remember most fondly for having back-to-back go go go to platoes in a fight, which is an incredibly funny thing to happen, especially

at heavyweight. I'm really pleased with this one, guys. I put this as an optional category because it's a lot harder. It takes a little bit more work. I don't want to put the onus on y'all. I came up with two things that I'm pretty pleased with. Did y'all do this? Do you have answers?

Does anyone want to proffer their Fund with Stats Award to the group? I have one that's not very goofy. Like it's not a Brad Ims stat, but it's kind of just like mind blowing. There's the obvious length of title runs and all those things. We listed many records he holds, yes. Yeah, off the top, you went through those. the one to me that I think gets under recognized and underrepresented.

How many total fights did Anderson Silva have in the UFC? Do we know this offhand? I don't know it offhand. So you had 25. I was going to say I could figure it out pretty quickly. Yeah, 25 total UFC fights. He headlined, he was the main event of 20 of those 25. So that's from start to finish, his prime.

we talked about how bad the ending of his career was still amongst those 25 UFC fights he headlined 20 in the four in four of the remaining five out of the 25 he was the co-man event so Chris Levin was he co-main and Chris Leban yeah or is that the only one that he wasn't in this list? No he was so so in that one he was comain and so out of 25 24 he was the mainer comain Maine with the majority. It was the main events. The Libby won. Sorry, that's right.

It was a fight night where he was the main event. Yeah. So the one, it's 200 is the one that he was. It was 200 that he took on two days notice. So literally, this entire man's UFC career was being the main attraction. And even when he's in the co-main, he's the main attraction, he was the shining star. He was the spotlight. He was everything from the moment he walked in the door at the UFC.

It's pretty crazy. Like this dude was the guy forever. Piggy backing off this, he is second in the list for most pay-per-view main events. 17, one behind Randy Coutre. So, yeah, dude was on top from day one, basically. Heem, what do you have here? Yeah, I mean, mine piggybacks right off of Eric's, just in terms of the length of dominance, the length of time this all lasted, right?

Because I hate to keep going back to it, but it was just bothering me so much when it was going on. Like Israel, Adasania dominated. 185 for like five straight years ish and he had the most title fight since 2019. Like three years. Something like that, right? Since he came in, I guess I'm starting, I'm going from the UFC debut. And since

2019 is he had the most title fights. He had 11, the closest was Chef Chango with 9. He has five total title defenses over the course of that. Anderson Silva doubles that. He has 10, 10 in a row. He has 11. He has 11 if you want to throw Luter. We have to stop pretending that Travis Luter

is the title defense. He has 11 if you throw Luter in. Is he... Yiske Mouche thinks he has 11. Yeah. She agrees with him. Look, Izzy's, like, made a very angry point that he has won more title defense because he was the interim champion fighting Robert Whitaker and counts that as a defense, which is bullshit. But if you're going to give that any credence at all, Travis Luter is a fucking title defense.

And to jump on that, if you take Izzy's first title reign, 1,133 days, add the second title reign, which is 155 days. 1288 days 1200 it's half it's 1,20088s literally half of Anderson Anderson's silver was champion

for 2,475 days or 57 days I didn't put that together this is why I lose my mind when we tried to rewrite history because we forget what has come before also I'll throw out 16 and 0 greatest start to a UFC career ever

never been eclipse probably never will be so I do want to piggyback off the 2,457 Because in a way to add contact to this, I decided to have a little bit of fun with that number is one of my two. So, you guys, I mean, we all remember World War II. This fairly notable event in world history. Can you give me a brief synopsis? I'm not familiar.

The world was at war, and it fundamentally shaped the globe for the next 12 decades. That sounds like that. That's the second one. It was the sequel. That sounds important. It was a rematch. It had been built up very big. They sold a lot of pay-per-views. It lasted 2,194 days. The entirety of World War II, you could fit inside of Anderson Silva's title reign. There are first graders who knew, there were legitimate first graders in America who did not live in a world where Anderson Silva was not the champion.

But my favorite one is that earlier this year was a man named Kevin Carr. And Kevin Carr said a record becoming the fastest person to run around the world on foot to physically circumnavigate the world with his feet. Not that many people have done it. He did it in 621 days. It would take the fastest man to ever do it. Four circles of the globe to get to Anderson Silva's title reign. It's just not real. It's not possible.

It's the most fictitious thing I've ever heard. And Shaheen, I like you, lose my mind when we're like, no, this guy's great. He put in four title defenses. Unbelievable. Talk to me when he's done it for seven years, for seven years. Then we can have the conversation. I know we have a ton of fantastic stats. So I got a sad one.

Ooh, that's not good, but okay. Yeah. I don't think, I didn't go that deep doing the research, but I think this is sad is correct. I think his, and also, he was the fighter to enter, to be inducted to the whole thing after the longest, the worst losing skid. One fight of his last nine in the UFC.

BJ Penn. Which one? B.J.P.P.J.P.P.J. wasn't no no bj was inducted in 2015 i think he lost like three or five or five or stuff like that he wasn't i didn't think about that that's great this year only yeah because bj got inducted after he kept fighting you know yeah so i forgot about that yeah bjj got inducted before the comeback against yair i didn't think about that at all that is may because i immediately went to b jay nailed it well let me let me make things a little bit happier because this is the one I found that I genuinely didn't believe until I just kind of piece it out.

I can't confirm this 100% for reasons that will become pretty clear here. But when you think of the most successful stars in UFC history, who do you have on that list? Silva, GSP Jones. I mean monetarily successful. Oh, oh. GSP. Yeah, GSP. Yeah, GSP.

GSP, Connor, Connor, Ronda, Brock, yeah. So would it check? Maybe he was a little early, but I'm pretty certain in doing the research here. I'm actually fairly certain at this point

that Anderson Silva is the second most lucrative fighter in MMA history behind only Connor McGregor in terms of pay-per-view sold. Because he has a minute. a ton of money way more than the numbers that came up. That's a fact.

And so what officially I could piece together, he, he is responsible or at least, you know, half very responsible for 9,635,000 pay-per-view buys in his UFC history, you know, whether those are true numbers or not, the only person with more is Connor. What was GSP? GSP is like 7,000. or not 7,000, I'm 7 million. GSP is like in the neighborhood of close. The closest person and the person who will potentially pass him could not be confirmed.

GSP is 9 million, actually. I just looked at it up, 9,000, 100,000. So 500,000 less than Anderson. John Jones may have it because, as we all know, since ESPN deal, pay-per-view numbers haven't been reported anywhere reasonably. and so the numbers we have to go on. Still, if John Jones, when I was kind of putting this together, what John already has officially recorded versus the three pay-per-views

since those have not been disclosed, John would need to be averaging like $850,000 per those events to be in the neighborhood. Otherwise, he is still behind Anderson, even with the upcoming pay-per-view against Steve-Bay. So, again, it's possible, but, At worst, because Rhonda's career was short, she actually ended up not selling more than like five or six. And GSP and Silva kind of ended their runs as pay-per-view headliners kind of around the same time. So they were kind of on the same track. And Anderson simply had more.

And then I kind of didn't recognize how well Anderson did as a pay-per-view headliner. I mean, he was consistently fine part of the UFC boom where he was selling basically $400, $350 every time out. But then, you know. Thanks, Chale. But then the Chale gives him a big bump. But then the back half, it's just he is a consistently going to be clocking upper fives and six. And he had, he was part of, you know, a billion pay-per-views. And so that's, it's just kind of clocked those numbers.

So absolutely did not anticipate Anderson Silva being responsible for the second most pay-per-views in UFC history. But I'm actually pretty certain that that is true. My, yeah, the paper views, yes, but in terms of lucrative, in terms of money, I would have to guess that Israel-A-Sanja's less number is still worth more total money in the long run. Or if not, he's probably pretty close. Maybe. So there's not any, there's very little numbers. The data is gone, yeah. Yeah, very little numbers on Izzy.

There are only four things that I could find pay-per-view buys on. None of them clipped a mill The Blohovic fight being the one that had the most reported at 800,000 again Can't even be certain any of these numbers are true None of them are reliable now Yeah and with but he only headlined 11 events versus you know Anderson's 19 or 18 or whatever it was so 20 total and like 17 paper views or whatever it was yeah It's it wouldn't shock me but I Jinn that was the thing that was the most surprised and it was like holy shit he He just underratedly important from a pay-per-view standpoint for him.

No, he's the guy. He is the pay-per-view guy. Like, Connor, obviously, but like, as I said, from literally day one, he was the star of the UFC. From the moment he stepped in. Exactly. And I think that was the part that I kind of didn't remember thinking back is like how important he was so quickly. It's crazy. But it was.

Our next category, almost done here. Just a few more left. the Sean Ferris Award for the actor who should play him in a movie. It's named after Sean Ferris from the cinematic masterpiece. That is, Never Backed Down, or the greatest. It makes martial arts for all time. Easiest category of the bunch. Who did their homework?

This is a test on whether you did your homework or not, because in case you don't know this, Anderson Silva is having a movie made about him. It's actually, I think it's a mini-series. It's on Paramount Plus, and it's probably going to come out next year. No, no. Next month. Oh, it's coming out next month. November 16, yeah.

I saw the teaser trailer. I just sent the tweet, tweet. The shoot. Yeah. So I saw the teaser trailer looking this up. But yes, the answer is a man named William Nassimento, who was cast and has done the role. And apparently it's coming out next month. He put the teaser on his Instagram.

You can find the teaser trailer for the show out there on YouTube. It actually looks decent. I mean, he certainly physically looks a lot like Anderson Silva. The guy they got to play Chale in the teaser looks a heck of a lot like Chale. So I'm excited. Paramount Plus is doing the Anderson Silva story. We have an answer. This is probably the first time.

We have three answers. We have three answers. It's not only one actor playing Anderson Silva. There are three actors. Who's the third? Because you've got the young one, but what's the? There are three actors. I just sent on the Slack channel.

It's William Nacimento, Bruno Vinicius, and Caitano Vieira. They are playing. And also saving three stages of his life. Well, I don't know. This is a good casting because I thought it was the same guy. Those three guys are three different actors. You're telling me Bruno Vinicius, who I knew was playing young him is not the same as Keitano Vieira? That's not the same man.

That's not the same man. That dude is related. They're the same person. The photos you sent us, the youngest in the middle look like the identical person. They look identical. Yeah. Wow. I did not realize that.

Here's a question for you, though. Can they fight? That's what I want to know. I have no idea. I will say that in the teaser, I have concerns that Nassiminto might not look great fighting. It's a very small clip. so remain to be seen.

This is why that's not the right answer. There is a right answer. I know the answer you're going to pick because it's the answer I would have picked if I didn't do the homework. His kid? This is his son? That's on my list, but that's actually third.

There's one right, right, right answer. And it's obvious because the question I'm asking is, can they fight? You need to know Anderson Silva inside and out. You need to be able to do the moves. You need to be Anderson Silva. And who better? We have an actor.

who knows Anderson Silva, who is Anderson Silva, it's Stephen Segal. He taught him everything he knows. He taught him the moves. Oh, my God. And he's an actor. How did we get two and a half hours with this just being the first Stephen Segal reference? How did we talk about that fight with not even mentioning that Stephen Seagal taught him the kick of death? Oh, man.

What a weird moment. Steven Seagal has been like an in-joke between me and my brother for like, a decade at this point now because of this thing. Have you ever gone on a Steven Segal rabbit hole on YouTube? It's, it's a journey. I mean, I've seen all this movies. I'm, I'm going to be honest. Like, I'm a big. You have definitely not seen all his movies.

Oh, wow. You don't know my depravity when it comes to. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, Steven Segal has put out a lot of direct divid content that I cannot imagine you have. I've seen them all. I am, I am the B movie, B action movie. Have you watched

a tremendous I have not seen I've seen some of the ones where he's starring as like various like soldiers you know like I've seen some of those ones like the act basically that that Hansel Cibber had lines

I'm so curious to watch that but I haven't I didn't I didn't watch any of them but I probably should have in prep for this but I just decided not to do it just the just the nothing is worse Just to cap the Steven Seagall conversation,

there are so many wonderful Steven Seagal videos on the internet of him doing very, very obviously fake, Akito demonstrations in Russia and things like this. Also, there's one of him like trying to wax philosophical for like a minute straight, but he can't get it at all and he just gets derailed and it's the most nonsensical bullshit you've ever seen in your life.

Also, he released an album called Songs from the Crystal. I'm so glad you said that because I was about to make that. It's like songs from the Crystal Cave or songs from the Crystal Palace or something. It's a fucking hilarious. You need to go watch. How deeply online are you? Because the that, Stephen Seagall's songs from the Crystal Cave has become, or at least like in the last couple of months made the rounds as a TikTok slash Instagram meme.

Because it's somebody being like, was no one going to tell me that Stephen Seagal put out an album where. where there's a reggae song and his first lyrics are Miwanda Poonani. That is a real thing. Which is a true fact. That's a real thing. And one, the song kind of bangs. Like, song kind of bangs.

The whole album is not necessarily kind of okay. It's very upsetting. It's totally okay. Just so we're clear because Rick is losing it. Me and my buddies went down this particular rabbit hole about a month ago. And now we say that lyric a lot to each other. But his self-description. of the album is

outsider country meets world music meets Akito which just so we're clear Akito is a martial art style that he is transcribing into his music. Just the vibes though,

you know? You got to incorporate the vibes. It's incredible. I highly, songs from the Crystal Cave. I don't know how we got here. I do know and it's great because songs from the Crystal Cave

is just incredible. The song is titled Strut, and I highly encourage you to listen to him in a fake Jamaican accent, say Miwanda Punani. Who's to tell this Renaissance man that he can't play Anderson Silva? Who is to tell him that? Nobody. On a more serious note, I did think that young Lawrence Fishburn could be a guy who could give a good accounting. Yeah, I mean, for sure. but you shaved the head.

We've already seen the Morpheus look. You shaved the head. He could probably have pulled off. As the martial arts. And Silva. Oh, Shaheen, thank you for putting that into the channel for those. The uninitiated can adventure in there. I'm probably going to put a clip of that in here because there's no way someone's going to come for us for that.

So it's fantastic. Did anyone else have anything for Sean Ferris or do we think talking about Stephen to golf for 10 minutes is good enough. I think we got it. Our next category, our penultimate category, the Cole Conrad Career Change Award, named after Cole Conrad, who is out there, just selling milk instead of being the Belator heavyweight champion of the world.

Cole Conrad could have fought Fador twice, and instead he's selling milk. It was a little tougher for me. I picked an answer, and I just kind of went with it because I don't think it's a bad one. Might not be the best. I went with dancer. That's what I had.

Man's got the moves. Did it all the time. It just seems like a great non-combat career for him. Just out there dancing. Maybe dancing two songs from the Crystal Cave, you know. Maybe that's he still would have met Steven's gone another life. Jeanne, you've got dancer. Rick Gee, what do you have here?

I had a variation of that. I just said some kind of entertainer, like a pop star of some sort, like whether it's like dancer, singer, singer. He can Anderson sing. Comedian. Do you know if Anderson can sing? Have I ever heard this voice? This man's voice.

He might have a tremendous, he might have a very nice falsetto, you know? I don't know. Look, I've heard Stephen Seagal's voice, and then he puts on a Jamaican accent, and it's, it transports you. So who can say what this man could do? I ran with not, I mean, I think, more of a realistic answer is he would probably work on a McDonald's or stuff like that. He was something that he was doing a mid-career when he said, shootboxed him over with pride and he was ready to call quits and live in a way

and started working on a McDonald's before Big Nog left took him to a Brazilian top team to to resume his career training. So I think he would probably something like that. Come from humble roots, like poor family. I think it would be nice to imagine. It would be dancing all over Brazil. But I think it would be probably something like that. Can we just all acknowledge like this man was born to fight

and the answer is always fighter? The answer is always fighter in this category, but that's why you pick the other ones. It's what Cole Conrad is about. But I even mean... But I even mean... I'm born to fight and now he's selling milk. I even mean amongst fighters, like Anderson Silva is the fighter.

Like, even in the tiers of what other fighters that we get, like, Anderson Silva is the guy who was always going to be a fighter and... Oh, I don't know. I think our next episode of Dam has a man more of the ilk of set fighters. That's a tease. Nice little tease there. I'll tease that up in just a minute because we're on our last category before we close shop. stuff. Look at me now!

Leon Edwards Award for the best moment of the fighter's career, of course, named after Leon Edwards' emotional speech after winning the U.C. Walthaway title over Kamar U.S.man. Don't down to me, I couldn't do it. This one for me, I went with, you know, I think you can pick a lot of spots here, but we're all probably going to be in the same general time frame. I went Chale Sun and two, because, you know, coming off of Chale Sun and one, he obviously wins an epic comeback. but there was a narrative of you got beat for four rounds and then had to pull it out.

But there were just no questions left for him, none whatsoever after Chale Sondon 2. He had kicked Vitor Belfort in the face via the help of Stephen Segal. He had avenged his DQ lost to Yushin Okami in a fight that kind of really no one even thinks about. It was just so perfunctory of an ass beating. and then Chale too, Chale the guy who had put him the closest to defeat. And then, as we mentioned, embarrassed him. Like, Chale, the weakest Chale's probably ever looked in a fist fight. And that's it.

I think if he retires at that moment in time, we already talked about it. But I just, his career was never getting better than that moment. And so for me, that's the look at me now. Gee, what do you have for here? Where, what was the peak? I like your answer. I think it makes sense. I mean, I didn't want to go Belfour again because that's definitely his peak, especially in Brazil.

But with all the narrative that Joe Sondon gave him his toughest challenge and then coming back to fight him again and putting that performance, I think that's the right answer. That's me trying to not pick Vita Belfour again. I understand it. Shaheen, what about you? Yeah, I mean, that pretty much feels like it sums it up for me. I had all of 2012, if we're just going, like, peak year,

because that is Chail Sondon, two, and then Stefan Bonner as well. Was he Fighter of the Year that year? I don't know if he was Fighter of the Year. I mean, that was just Chale, too, and then Bonner. But at that point, he is the consensus goat at that point. Everybody sort of hails him as that. He was untouchable. He's 37 going on 38.

And again, I hate to repeat myself, but he walks away at that exact moment. he's legendary on a different level. I mean, yeah, totally fair. Rick, are you in agreement here? Yeah, mostly. I mean, you could slice it right after the Bonner fight. You could slice it before because I don't think the Bonner fight does a ton for the legacy. But it's just right before Chris Widman.

Before, you know, he played too much and it went off the rails. Anderson Silva felt like a god of martial arts. And I don't know that I have felt that way about anybody else. Since, like, I don't think that anybody has scraped the ceiling the way he did at that time. Because it would be easy, and we've seen this with Israel-A-Sahna, for those bad performances or the ones that were not, I don't even want to call them bad. The performances where they weren't exciting or people had criticisms about the style and it was boring and Dana White's throwing a fit. He was able to overcome those because of the goodwill he had built with the absolutely iconic mind-melting shit that he had done previously. and I don't know that anybody's going to be able to really just put together a streak that that can rival that.

So it's whatever moment in time you want to cut it right before Wydman. I'm perfectly fine with any point there. Well, no one's ever going to get a streak to rival 16 because Uzman was the closest at 15 and then fell short. I mean, I guess knockage jobs at 12. Yeah, and if you, you know, rightfully scored the fight for Demetrius Johnson over Henry Sehudo, like obviously, he would have been in that combo and possibly even eclipsed it. But yeah, these are

that's A and B as far as the Goh conversation for me personally. Also, just quick note, fight of the year in 2012 and I get it and it's probably it's not Anderson Silva because it's Rhonda Rousey which makes a ton of sense

given the importance of going on there. And that brings us, ladies and gentlemen, to the end of the show to close shop up to talk about the legacy of Anderson Silva or anything else that you that needs to be said that you didn't get out here. You know, there's still meat on the bone. You want to talk about Nick Diaz and how weird that shit was.

You want to talk about Michael Bisping and how he was robbed. Whatever you got to say to close up your thoughts about Anderson Silva. Now is the time to do it. And Rick, I want to start with you. So hit me. Yeah, I love Anderson Silva unabashedly. The moments that he provided to us live forever. and he and a very few others kind of defined my MMA fandom.

I really wish. Every time I think about Anderson Silva, I do think about the good times and I do not think about the end of the career. They really just kind of fade away. Like they're not very like relevant to the memories. It really is the prime that immediately comes forward for me. But I do feel like we got cheated out of Anderson Silva and GSP. The fight was there and it was it was very possible at that time.

and they were both in their relative peaks, and it burns me to this day that that fight was not made. But even casting that aside, everything was still fantastic, and what an incredible career that he had. So, yeah, I remember that time extremely fondly in my fandom, but man, I wish we had gotten Anderson Silva versus GSP. It would have been dope. Guy, what do you have to close up,

up here? In a way, I owe Anderson Silva, not only him, but other great fighters for the job that I have today, because for the Anderson Silvas and Big Noggs and Vito Belforce, the huge stars from Brazil, that comes the interest for the world's greatest MAA website, at an MA fighting to have someone here. Just the greatest website, not even an in a new website, just the greatest. You're correct. You're correct. And I've been lucky to be selected to work for this site covering in Brazil.

Like for the word to be interested in having someone covered the daily news and stuff like that in in Brazil. It's because of people like Anderson Silver. He may suck as a person, but he's a fantastic athlete. And I can't take anything away from that. He's a fantastic athlete. It was a joy to watch most of his career. And funny enough, I started working for MMA fighting a month. A month?

No, like three weeks after he lost to Chris Wygner. So I never, I only had one MMA fight that. He won while working for every fighting. But he was a genius and it was a joy, a privilege to watch him in his prime. Well, we're going to go from that to favorite fighter of all time. I just love the. Coming both into the spectrum. I love the aside of even though he sucks as a person.

Even though he sucks. It's great. It's the best thing of this whole podcast. He just sucks like he was a genius. I'm sorry that you've had such negative experiences with him, Kee. I've always had nothing but positive interactions with him, but it's probably also a language barrier where it's maybe a little harder for him to be a dick to me. There's a thing that Brazilians love to do.

They, Brazil in general, treats non-Nob Palestinians better than they treat Brazilians. So I think you're low-key telling us something about your relationship with us, where maybe you don't particularly like us, but you tolerate us. I was saying, now I don't know what to feel. If that's how you're like it. I respect it. He's not a what's asking. You call his Playboys and your personal life all the time?

I'm not calling. No comment. No comment. It's normal. I respect it so much. I mean, for me, obviously I've said a lot over the last two and a half hours. I don't want to repeat myself. I'll just always be thankful and remember Anderson Silva for putting the artist in the phrase

mixed martial artists, right? Like he, more so than anyone. else that I can truly think of embodies the artistic side of this. He was a genius. You said the word genius. I think that's a perfect word to use here. He was an artistic genius in there with a way that he would paint his masterpiece in the canvas or on the canvas would just be, it defies words if you were there to live in the moment and experience it and not just like hear us talk about it and watch old highlights. Like seeing these nights happen in real time of, oh, hey, he's about to go fight Forrest Griffin, what's going to happen?

And then watching The Matrix play out in front of you. Or same with the Vitor Belfort. Or same with XYZ, Chal Sond, whatever you want to say. It did not feel real. It did not feel like an actual human being could be doing the things that he was doing. And now that he has more or less like hung it up for good and as the years move on and we get more separation from the end of it, the tail end of it, I agree with Eric that it's not the warts that I'm going to remember.

it's those nights it's the magical nights it's the ufc 101s that will forever stick with me nights where this one man we all watched him tap into tap into the impossible in such a profound way that it really did make you feel like anything was possible in your own life right like some kid from phoenix could be watching this and no matter how absurd it seemed anything was possible because this guy was doing that that's the kind of lesson you never forget um and i for me i would like to leave on a quote from Chal Sondon from 2013, I was speaking to him then, and I'd asked him about Anderson Silva's legacy and how he considers Anderson. And this was right after his fights happened. So he was still fresh. He was still competing. And this was Chal Sond in 2013. He said, Chris Wyatman is the first to say,

I'm not the fighter, Anderson Silva is, and I may have beaten him, and I may have beaten him, but I haven't carried the heavy water long enough. And he's right about that. Anderson Silva beat enough guys over enough years. He climbed that mountain. He stayed there. It's extremely difficult to get to the top, but to stay there for a significant period of time like he did, nobody's ever done it. It doesn't matter if I'm a rival of Anderson Silva's or not. I'm also very objective, and I'm not going to take something from a guy that he earned. Anderson's Ilva earned the right to be called the greatest of all time, and those are just the facts. And obviously that's a quote from 2013.

Circumstances have changed, but I think that just speaks to who Anderson Silva is as an athlete, that his greatest rival could say those words with all of that still so deeply. fresh for him. Man, I got to stop putting you on this podcast because it's really tough to follow you. I feel it so bad right now. No, you're not here. No, you did great. I have to follow that and put a bow on this thing.

And it's always just tough to do this. I just hope the bosses never listen to this podcast. So they're probably thinking, why are we paying like Guillem and Jedd and race? I can assure you. Just give Shahina Rose and he's just carried, he's doing all by himself. If our bosses, I can assure you, they're not listening three hours into this podcast. If our bosses are listening to this podcast, they definitely stop during the Steve is a call conversation. And they're listening to songs from the Crystal Cave right now.

Yeah, and they probably wanted to yell at me for that. But then they're like, actually, this is bag. So it's fine. But yeah, they're not listening because we're three hours in, which fun fact, guys. Anderson Silva's entire UFC career four hours and six minutes total so we've almost achieved what you could you could be listening to this podcast

and watching Anderson's entire career and in line up pretty well Sheen said everything really well and really brilliantly and he's more connected and so I'm going to I'm going to close this down in a very simple premise here which is I think of all of these

that I have done this one has hit home the most for me of how much the regret I have for Anderson's career and not what his career was but my association with it because I was never a huge Anderson fan I liked Anderson and I certainly grew to respect him as the years went on but I didn't get super excited every time he fought I just was interested but I never connected emotionally and as I went back and watched this and start going through this and thinking it's like man, I wish that, I wish he was one of my favorite fighters ever because, look, I can remember all the good things, but even the weird things and the bad parts and the bad stretch at the end still had these moments. You know, he loses.

The Nick Diaz fights a fiasco, and it's super weird, but it still has moments. And Michael Bisping, he loses, but he wins that fight realistically. You know, if you're a normal person, you knock a person out, you win the fight. And there it goes. The Daniel Cormier, like, even the. bad time still showcase to me in real time like hey this is what in all

time great looks like when they don't have their fastball anymore and what they can do with their off speed pitches and I wish I could have appreciated the fastball more because I just didn't at that point but as I went back and I dove into this I think I've been coming around

to this idea with various other podcasts yeah if he's not the goat he's in the top three I'm pretty comfortable saying that him, Fadour and John Jones are some iteration of the best fighter that I've ever seen because seven years is impossible. Like it's just not, you just can't be done. It simply cannot be achieved really ever again. And I still don't even believe that it happened but for the fact that we just spent three hours and some change talking about it.

And so if you're arguably the greatest fighter of all time, I don't care if you went into the Hall of Fame on a one and nine record. I totally fine with it because you know what? Damn, you were really good, Anderson Silva, and I'm really happy that I got to experience part of your career, even if I didn't experience it in the way that maybe I should have. And that's it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode, down.

I want to thank Germann Cruz. I want to thank New York, Rick, and I want to thank Sheehan al-Shadi for joining me on this epic journey, this one that Shaheen has passed for me about for some time. It was really fun, and you know what? We're going to do it all again in two weeks because it's every other week for this.

And, Guy, your services will be required again because I teased it, Ricky. I teased the fighter who is more fighter than Anderson Silva. It's another Silva. It's Vanderlay Silva. Maybe the most fittery fighter that's ever fought a fight. We're doing him next.

We're going full Brazil, full Guillermo Cruz. He's taking over the show. I honestly don't remember who else is on that podcast over me and Guillermo. I'm sure there's somebody else. But until then, thank you all if you've made it three hours.

I desperately hope you go listen to Steven Seagal's album. And until next time, love you. Podcast Network.