Erick Silva: The Night the Wheels Fell off the Wagon

As Erick Silva came to his senses he looked as though he had come out of a peaceful slumber. It was only moments later that a resigned disappointment appeared in his eyes. He had been laid out. Put on ice. Starched for the first time in his career by a man who had just a single finish to his name in the last five years.

The knockout in combat sports reaches deep into our chests and drags up something primal. On the rare occasion that we witness a player knocked out by a clash of heads or a run into an elbow in a soccer game, or even in rugby or the NFL, our eyes are automatically drawn to the downed man. Concern for his health is our immediate reaction. But when that knockout is inflicted by another fighter, all eyes shoot to the victor.

The bested man shrinks from view and never really returns. In part, this is aided by the trickery of camera work as the prostrate loser is relegated to the briefest of background shots until he has regained consciousness—reflecting the awkward feelings we all battle over enjoying a sport in which men actively look to damage one another. But even in the arena, it is as though the victor has taken something from his victim along with his consciousness—he becomes the absolute focus of all attention.

Only on the rarest of occasions does the downed fighter draw the crowd's gaze more readily than the victor. In the event of an obvious tragedy, such as in the death of Benny Paret, or in the event of a truly shocking upset of a fan favorite. Never have I seen a stadium go silent and evacuate so quickly as when Ovince St. Preux easily dispatched Brazilian legend, Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua with more a fizzle than a bang.

When Erick Silva awoke from his pugilistically induced slumber to find himself staring up at the ring lights, he was center stage. He had been the favorite coming into the bout with Dong Hyun Kim, and was being advertised as the next big thing in mixed martial arts. Silva had stopped everyone in his path in the UFC before ending up on the wrong end of a Jon Fitch wrestling match, and it had seemed that he would continue to improve in leaps and bounds. An enormous welterweight, Silva packed a tremendous punch combined with the strength to shuck off the majority of grapplers or beat them up in the clinch, and the agility to time spinning back kicks and winding body kicks as soon as a favorable instant arose. He was, quite frankly, terrifying.

Dong Hyun Kim seemed as though he was being fed to the wolves. And even those in the community informed enough to realize that Kim's grappling chops could bother the Brazilian upstart certainly never envisioned the clumsy Korean winning by knockout.

From the very beginning of the bout, Silva had been hunting the knockout, knowing that Kim would charge, head first, towards clinches, Silva's plan was to intercept the Korean with hard uppercuts and knee strikes, before shucking off the clinch and re-establishing distance to try again. Kim has never been an evasive fighter and as Silva threw hard blows against his guard, Kim swung like a man in the rigging. But what became abundantly clear was that sooner or later, Kim would get to the clinch. And while Silva fought out of most attempts, he did so through tremendous effort and wound up sprinting away from Kim to re-establish distance.

Watching this, along with Silva's severely lacking ringcraft—he often ran himself directly backwards into the fence, or rebounded off of it as he attempted to circle out—it quickly became apparent that Silva was not the hunter, lining up his shot. He was a wild beast, fighting for his life. Silva's hands hung low around his waist as he anticipated Kim's attempts on his waist, and his uppercuts were flailing swings which looked as though they had more hope of taking out the ring lights than Kim.

For Kim's part, it was a performance which was hideous in its perfection. If one devised the perfect way to fight Silva, then executed it in the wildest, living-on-a-knife-edge possible, you still might not out-ugly Kim's game that night. Trudging straight across the ring at the pressure-sensitive Brazilian, Kim showed no ring cutting or even thought, but he exhibited tremendous grit. When Silva landed blows on Kim, it almost invariably spun the Korean's head around.

Early in the second round it looked as though Silva had succeeded in finding his spot and would pick up the finish as he set Kim on his heels with a pair of swings which landed accurately. Chasing Kim to the fence with a jumping knee, Silva soon found himself fighting out of the tar pit of Kim's clinch again. That, more than anything, made Kim a perfect opponent for Silva. He could take a frightful shellacking an he would still grab a hold of the Brazilian star-in-waiting.

Even amid all the hideous spinning backfists, and trudging straight into punches, Kim's gameplan was working perfectly. Silva's hands were sagging, and soon his lungs were on fire. The problem was that the same was true of Kim. Not only was Kim trying to smother a gigantic welterweight in the clinch, he was pirouetting, missing almost everything he threw, and absorbing blows from one of the division's biggest hitters to get there.

Kim was slowing, Silva was landing, but the ticking clock was on Silva. He only had so much pop left in him and halfway through the second round of only a three round fight, he had done little to prove he was the better man.

The universal truth in combat sports is that a great fighter who is tired is no more than a bad fighter. All the technical ability, craft, speed and power in the world doesn't mean squat if the fighter cannot control his own movements absolutely. As Silva became more desperate, he swung harder and his non-punching hand dropped lower. As he became more exhausted, he became more stationary.

The punch which did Silva in was a throw-away punch, Kim seemed utterly surprised when Silva dropped to the floor and was in the process of backing away, but it was the culmination of a perfect bombardment on Silva's endurance.

When he woke up, Silva had to feel like he just wanted to go back to sleep. When a great fighter falls to an underdog, there is a shared melancholy as the viewer accepts the reality of mortality in even the greatest men. When a hyped prospect loses, people revel in it. He is the object of derision. Everyone he's beaten becomes a can, everyone who beat him is a "solid B-lister". He's just a bag of hot air, flim-flam and nothing more.

The sad truth is that Erick Silva is a legitimately brilliant talent, who has been oversold and undersold in equal measure. There is no shame losing to Jon Fitch, and the pressure which Dong Hyun Kim and Matt Brown put on Silva might have been ugly, but only the best of the best have been able to counter it. But equally, watching Silva destroy less than stellar competition to rebuild his confidence in recent years has the reasonable fight fan asking, "what is the point of this"?

Silva has an obvious flaw—pressure. Once it got him wrestled, and on two more recent occasions it has seen him tire and be stopped by blows. What would really be a revelation in Silva is the recognition that he can't go head-to-head with every opponent he meets and that he needs to adopt some more crafty movement and conservative counter striking if he hopes to contend with the truly elite athletes and strategists of the division.

Tune in this weekend to see Erick Silva take on Neil Magny and decide for yourself if you see anything new in him.