Wanderlei Silva began
his MMA career going 5-1 before joining up with the UFC where he lost
his
debut in 44 seconds to Vitor Belfort. It is one of the worst
losses in his career but he rebounded winning his
next 6 fights including 3 wins in PRIDE before challenging Tito
Ortiz for the UFC championship. Wanderlei lost via unanimous
decision to Tito but continued his PRIDE fighting career which would
make him
a star.
Wanderlei Silva started
his PRIDE career winning 18 straight fights and was on a 20 fight
unbeaten streak.
Silva won the middleweight championship and defended
it 3 times, won the 2003 middleweight Grand Prix and defeated some elite
fighters along the way. Wins over Guy Mezger, Dan
Henderson, Kaz Sakuraba
3 times, & Quinton "Rampage" Jackson twice put Wanderlei
among the best in the world in his weight class. Silva's first loss in
PRIDE was
to Mark Hunt, a K-1 champion and a 280 lb fighter by split decision.
Being outweighed by 80 pounds and accepting the fight on 2 days notice,
Wanderlei
still put up a fight that had some thinking he won a decision including
Randy Couture and Bas Rutten. Controversy then came up again when Silva
lost to Ricardo Arona in the 2005 tournament but didn't lose the championship
belt since it was a non title match. He fought Arona 4 months later and
defeated him by split decision. Replacing Fedor in
the Open-Weight Grand Prix in 2006, Silva got a bye in the 1st round
and then defeated Kazuyuki
Fujita to advance to the semi-finals where he would face off against
Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic. Cro Cop would defeat Silva with
a nasty head kick that knocked out Wanderlei. Following the loss, Silva
put up his title against Dan Henderson and lost by knockout in the 3rd
round in what ended up being his final fight in PRIDE.
After being very
successful in PRIDE and having many huge fights, he went back to the
UFC and got the long awaited fight with Chuck
Liddell.
The fight took
place at UFC 79 in december 2007 as the co-main event. Silva lost a unanimous
decision in what was an exciting fight that lived up to the hype.
Losing to Chuck is nothing to be ashamed of but the loss put Wanderlei
on a 3 fight losing streak and if he didn't win his next fight his career
could be over. Wanderlei took a fight with the dangerous Keith Jardine,
who just won his previous fight over Chuck Liddell. Wanderlei returned
to
old form and knocked out Jardine in 36 seconds, earning him knockout
of the night honors. His next fight could return him to title contention
if he can defeat the former UFC champion Quinton "Rampage" Jackson,
whom he has already beaten twice.
Wanderlei
Silva
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