Sherdog’s Top 10: Elbows

1. Anderson Silva vs. Tony Fryklund

Before Anderson Silva tested positive for steroids, before he cracked his shin in two, before he became the UFC’s long-reigning middleweight champion, before he knocked out the iron-jawed Chris Leben to announce his arrival in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, he knocked out Tony Fryklund with one of the coolest single moves in the history of mixed martial arts. That move was a reverse elbow that he had seen in the movie “Ong Bak” and had never attempted to throw in a fight.

The fight itself was an encapsulation of Silva’s diverse array of violent potential. He blasted Fryklund with knees and slashing elbows in the clinch, slammed home high kicks and uppercuts and nearly took him out with a flying knee. The piece de resistance, however, was the reverse elbow. There was no real setup or anything particularly complicated about it; Silva simply waited until Fryklund had his hands up in a tight double-forearm guard, stepped inside Fryklund’s lead foot, changed levels and came up with the point of the elbow between his forearms. It dropped the American, and that was that.

Whatever you might think about the end of Silva’s career, that elbow was amazing.

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