UFC 132 Reality Check: Dominick Cruz, Wanderlei Silva & the Slippery Hard Truth

One’s perception of reality, or lack thereof, can make the difference between success and failure at any endeavor, be it playing stocks, knitting a sweater or trading bungalows in the center of a cage.

Human nature being what it is, the hardest truths to accept tend to be the ones you most want to deny, and ironically, these are the ones that you most need to acknowledge.

Dominick Cruz and Wanderlei Silva are facing different paths in their UFC careers, and recent interviews that each of them has given show telling differences in each fighters’ grasp of what most of us would consider to be the obvious.

In the case of Silva, his comments were made pre-fight, which presented me with an opportunity to make some paper.

In the fight game, it’s well known that looking past an opponent is about as wise as not looking both ways when you cross the Las Vegas strip. But looking past Chris Leben doesn’t begin to describe Silva’s pre-fight behavior.

Despite having been knocked out in three of his previous seven fights, and after over a year-long layoff, during fight week Silva announced his intention to fight two times a year for the next five years.

Not only that, he’d already begun filling those slots. Vitor Belfort was next—Silva had shared that much with us.

He wanted to avenge what had been his worst loss to date, when Belfort knocked him out in 44 seconds at UFC Ultimate: Brazil round (A time Chris Leben beat by 17 seconds at UFC 132.) 

The remaining nine spots after Belfort in Silva’s fantasy grand prix of MMA redemption were not revealed, but we can assume Dan Henderson, who knocked Silva out at UFC 33, was penciled in somewhere—perhaps on Silva’s way up in weight to even the score with Cro-Cop?

Wanderlei Silva was looking so far past Chris Leben that he didn’t even bother to claim that he wasn’t looking past Leben.

Meanwhile, it’s a good bet that Leben, fighting his idol, wasn’t looking past Silva.  That Leben was the underdog at all is likely testament to the general public’s sentimental sharing of Silva’s disconnect with reality, as they drove the line by laying ill-advised dollars on their over-the-hill hero.

I thought I knew better, and now have an extra $1.45 jiggling around my Bodog account to show that I did.

Contrast Silva’s perception of reality with that of bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz, after his title defense against Urijah Faber. On the topic of a rubber match, Cruz told MMA30tv,  “I know I can beat him nine out of 10 times.” 

That’s a refreshing and unusual acknowledgement. After all, how many fighters would tell you anything other than, “I’ll beat him 100 out of 100 times”?

And while such talk is of course mildly delusional, we’ve come to expect that from fighters. The demands of climbing the Mixed Martial Arts food chain practically requires it.

This makes Dominick Cruz’s admitting that Urijah would probably beat him from time to time if they fought often enough an unusual display of maturity, even if the true ratio might be more like six of 10.

Am I saying that Silva’s and Cruz’s differing perceptions of reality are responsible for the respective descent and ascent of their careers? Of course not.

And for what it’s worth, getting punched in the face by Rampage and Chuck Liddell might do more to dull your sensibilities than getting hit by Scott Jorgenson and Urijah Faber.

But the fact remains that the statements a fighter makes can give valuable insight into a his mental state.  And here we see one fighter that’s actively trying to evolve and one who’s stuck in the glory days of the past.

Cruz’s acknowledgement of how evenly matched he and Faber were suggests that even though he won, he’ll go back to the drawing board, which would be a healthy response. After all, he’d probably never been floored with such regularity or been hit so hard.

Faber, for his part, showed a strong grasp of reality as well, acknowledging that he lost the fight after watching the tape. And he has to be encouraged that he has come closer than anyone else to “figuring out” Cruz’s perplexing style.

If they were to have a rubber match, it would be one hell of a high-speed chess match. I’d probably have to wait until fight week before deciding who to put my dollar on and see who’s got a better sense of what’s up. 

As for Silva, let’s hope getting put to sleep by Chris Leben serves as the wake-up call he needs.  It’s time for his dream to end.