Silva Out? Put Belfort and Sonnen Back In
Jake Rossen Aug 12, 2010
Despite being bludgeoned in the head and body nearly 300 times by
Chael
Sonnen -- a fact that speaks to Sonnen’s work ethic, if not
exactly his power -- it may turn out that Anderson
Silva’s pending layoff could stem not from an aching brain but
from the bruised/crack rib he suffered in training: Ramon Lemos,
Silva’s jiu-jitsu coach, told Fighter’s Only that Silva may not be
prepared to fight again until February or March of next year.
While bi-annual fight schedules are nothing new in the UFC, and injuries or illness can even hobble fighters for a year or more, it seems counter-productive to arrest the melodrama that started on Saturday. There’s momentum here, if the UFC chooses to activate it.
While it was a long and grueling fight, Sonnen came out of it
largely unmarked. Like his coach Matt
Lindland, he’s a workhorse who doesn’t complain about an active
schedule. He’d be ready to go in November. And conveniently, so
would Vitor
Belfort.
Belfort, originally scheduled to fight Silva last April before injury took him away, hasn’t fought since September 2009. He’s just sitting there, packed in ice, waiting to be unfurled for when the UFC decides it would be convenient to use his shaky status as a top contender. Is he really going to sit out for upwards of eighteen months? Why not lend some legitimacy to his status -- he’s had not one middleweight fight in the UFC -- by matching him against Sonnen?
There’s an argument against, obviously: with Silva having slaughtered most of that division, it makes more financial sense to keep both Belfort and Sonnen circling rather than guarantee one gets eliminated. I get it. But I also get that athletes have a very small window of opportunity to compete, and shelving them because of a champion’s injury displays a fairly gross ignorance of that fact. Matching them up against anyone else is disingenuous: they’re the number one and two contenders in the promotion. Who else could Belfort fight that would possibly aid his standing more than Sonnen?
In terms of structure, the UFC is nearly flawless. My one complaint remains their willingness to arrest divisions based on a single champion’s availability. Silva’s hurt, and it happens. But the show has got to go on.
While bi-annual fight schedules are nothing new in the UFC, and injuries or illness can even hobble fighters for a year or more, it seems counter-productive to arrest the melodrama that started on Saturday. There’s momentum here, if the UFC chooses to activate it.
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Belfort, originally scheduled to fight Silva last April before injury took him away, hasn’t fought since September 2009. He’s just sitting there, packed in ice, waiting to be unfurled for when the UFC decides it would be convenient to use his shaky status as a top contender. Is he really going to sit out for upwards of eighteen months? Why not lend some legitimacy to his status -- he’s had not one middleweight fight in the UFC -- by matching him against Sonnen?
There’s an argument against, obviously: with Silva having slaughtered most of that division, it makes more financial sense to keep both Belfort and Sonnen circling rather than guarantee one gets eliminated. I get it. But I also get that athletes have a very small window of opportunity to compete, and shelving them because of a champion’s injury displays a fairly gross ignorance of that fact. Matching them up against anyone else is disingenuous: they’re the number one and two contenders in the promotion. Who else could Belfort fight that would possibly aid his standing more than Sonnen?
In terms of structure, the UFC is nearly flawless. My one complaint remains their willingness to arrest divisions based on a single champion’s availability. Silva’s hurt, and it happens. But the show has got to go on.
