Its funny when a known wrestler like Sonnen faces a known striker like Silva. The guy who is known as the striker is more wary of takedowns and the wrestler knows this.
I dont know how many times Ive seen a better striker get hit and hurt by a wrestler cause he’s too preoccupied looking to defend the shot.
After getting rocked the striker starts looking to defend strikes which leaves him open or the takedown. Perhaps this was the case for Silva v Sonnen.
Silva weathered all that Sonnen had and squeezed out triangle choke in the 5th and final round to defend his UFC middleweight belt. Here I was in my previous post, bagging Silva for not fighting. Sonnen gave him all the fight he could handle and Silva still shone through and perhaps showed that Hall of Fame quality that I was talking about yesterday.
Good job by both Sonnen and Silva!
It looked to me that Matt Hughes was a bit on the defensive with Almeida starting off the first round with slightly more aggressive striking, until Hughes rocked him with a left hoo and ran into put Almeida to sleep with a vice like front head lock! Very nice.
Fitch looked his usual wrestling self while Alves loked a little rained from his weight cut. I gave Alves a slight edge on the feet but Fitch was able to land enought akedowns and , for the majority of the time, keeop the fight where he wanted it, and ripping out the decision win.
UFC 117 Results
Preliminary card
- Hallman defeated Saunders via unanimous decision (29–28, 30–27, 29–28).
- Struve defeated Morecraft via TKO (punches) at 0:21 of round 2. This fight was broadcast on PPV following the Guida vs. dos Anjos fight.
- Boetsch defeated Brown by unanimous decision (29–28, 29–28, 29–28).
- Hendricks defeated Brenneman via TKO (punches) at 0:40 of round 2.
- Davis defeated Wallace via unanimous decision (30–26, 30–27, 30–27).
- Story defeated Hazelett via TKO (punches) at 1:15 of round 2.
Main card
- Dos Santos defeated Nelson via unanimous decision (30–26, 30–27, 30–27).
- Hughes defeated Almeida via technical submission (anaconda choke) at 3:15 of round 1.
- Guida defeated dos Anjos via submission (broken jaw) at 1:51 of round 3.
- Fitch defeated Alves via unanimous decision (30–27, 30–27, 30–27).
- Silva defeated Sonnen via submission (triangle choke) at 3:10 of round 5 to retain the UFC Middleweight Championship. Interesting to note that this was only one of three fights in UFC history to end in the 5th round. The others were Randy Couture vs. Ricco Rodriguez at UFC 36, and B. J. Penn vs. Diego Sanchez at UFC 107.
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