Rich Franklin trained as hard as he'd ever trained for the rematch against the man who broke his nose and took his title.
Unfortunately for Rich, he faced the same fate—as Anderson Silva kneed, punched, and Muay Thai-clinched his way to his sixth-straight MMA win, and fifth in the UFC.
Not one of Silva's UFC fights has passed the second round. The only question now:
Who can stop the Spider?
Anderson is 20-4 in his MMA career. His last loss came in January 2006, on a disqualification for an illegal kick against Yushin Okami.
Okami lost to Rich Franklin in Rich’s comeback fight after losing to Silva.
Before the DQ, Silva's last loss was to Ryo Chonan at PRIDE's Shockwave event in 2004. If you haven’t seen this fight, I suggest you look it up—you'll see an improvisation from Ryo that he surely he couldn't have planned, and which surprised everyone in the building.
So who's next for Silva?
Okami and Chonan are both possibilities. Either challenger would jump at a chance to fight the man currently ranked by Sherdog as the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world—ahead of Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Fedor Emelianenko.
After Silva, Rich Franklin is probably still the No. 2 middleweight fighter. I personally don’t feel there's an active UFC middleweight who could beat Rich—let alone Silva.
The "who's next?" question has been taken up in the fan forums, and a name that keeps coming up is Dan Henderson. Henderson-Silva would be a great match for the UFC—but at the moment, it's only a fantasy.
There's also been talk of fighters from different weight classes either moving up or dropping down to compete at Middleweight—Matt Hughes (moving up) and Michael “The Count” Bisping (going down) have been mentioned.
However, like the Dan Henderson rumour, this is mere speculation from overenthusiastic fans—myself included—who want to know who can stop the unstoppable Spider.
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