UFC 148 Results: A Complete Guide to Defeating Anderson Silva

Anderson Silva improved his UFC record to 15-0 after handing Sonnen the first stoppage due to strikes in his career.

In the fight, Anderson Silva showed characteristically impressive striking, but more importantly, he showed significantly improved defensive wrestling.

Now that Silva has made improvements in his takedown defense, which had previously been considered a weakness of his, defeating Silva is a much more daunting task.

Now that Silva has displayed improved wrestling since his last fight with Sonnen, there are no longer any unknowns about his combative skills. All of his strengths and weaknesses and combative tricks are fully understood.

And with all of that in mind, I have developed a thorough guide that details how to defeat the greatest fighter competing in MMA today.

Primary Goal: Keeping the Fight in the Three Golden Locations

There are three places where Silva can not badly hurt someone. They are:

1) From his back

2) In a very tight clinch, preferably with Silva's back to the cage

3) From within a very tight or active guard

Realistically, it is unlikely we aren't going to see anyone with the skills to outstrike Silva while he is still competing.  So even the good strikers among his competitors need to understand that the best way to beat Silva is to fight where he can hardly land strikes.

Silva's biggest weakness is still his ability to fight off his back.  He is not, by any means, bad off of his back, but he also isn't great.

However, Silva's very improved wrestling has made the approach to exploiting this problem slightly more nuanced than it used to be. Still, the entire guide is focused primarily on exploiting Silva in the first two golden zones, and using the third one in scarce and necessary circumstances.

Understanding He Is Most Dangerous When He Hovers over Opponents

If you think the most dangerous position against Silva is being in his thai clinch or being in his striking range, you are wrong.

Silva is most dangerous when he hovers over his opponents.

In the best case scenario, the challenger will only find himself kicked in the hand or leg while he lies on his back. In the more likely scenario, he will find himself bloodied or finished.

Okami was finished with methodical, precision ground strikes. After Marquardt was taken down by Silva, he went from being fully conscious to unable to defend himself in just 10 seconds. Sonnen's loss began with a knee to the chest when Sonnen was grounded, and ended with more ground strikes. This was over the course of 20 seconds.

If the challenger is taken down, he has to secure a tight guard or quickly stand up. It's not enough to cover his head or carelessly throw his legs up for a submission.  The strategy of creating distance by pushing with one's legs has also proved completely ineffective.

The challenger's response to Silva hovering above him is based entirely on distance. If Silva isn't quite yet postured up and about to strike, then go for a very tight guard.  If he isn't about to strike, either stand up quickly or go for a tight guard. If the challenger in question has exceptional grappling abilities, he can fight off his back with attempts at submissions or sweeps. If not, he should ultimately look to get to his feet or stall until the referee stands the fight up.

If Silva is hovering over the challenger, but is too far away to land a strike, the challenger should stand up quickly and create space.  If he is right on top of him, he should stand up as fast as possible and go for a clinch or extra distance. It is important not to sacrifice speed for additional defense. Silva can finish fights remarkably quickly when he's looking down at his opponents, and it is best to stay in the danger zone for as short a time as possible.

Understanding When to Cover the Distance

Over the years, we've seen good and bad attempts to cover the distance and take Silva down or force a clinch. These are the keys to covering the distance the most successfully while taking the least amount of damage:

1) Step in, then shoot. Silva has proven himself too effective at sprawling for fighters to land a takedown by shooting in from outside Silva's striking range.  When shooting for a double, the challenger should do so from inside Silva's striking range.

2) Use multiple feints and strikes to set up takedowns and clinches. Silva is a brilliant counter puncher and reactionary fighter.  It is best to cover distance when he is in midswing, and he has a tendency to swing after dodging a few consecutive strikes.

3) Attempt constantly. It is possible that the challenger in question won't be skilled enough to throw feints or strikes of high enough concern for Silva's concentration on the potential takedown to be diverted. It is also possible that his takedown defense will make the first several takedowns unsuccessful, or that his movement will even prevent the fighter from getting a hold of him.

If all of that happens, it is absolutely imperative that the challenger does NOT give up on covering the distance and entering one of the golden zones. This is because no fighter is going to win if he is content to fight in Silva's range.

How to Fight Silva from the Clinch

The optimal clinch for dealing with Silva is double underhooks or a body lock against the cage. This allows for the greatest control, easiest transition to takedowns, allows the challenger to grab legs and force takedowns if the champion attempts a knee, and gives him more leverage to land knees of his own.

This is the optimal clinch, but any clinch at all (apart from Silva having a fully clasped thai clinch and the challenger having no hold at all) is better than duking it out from a striking distance. Once the challenger has the clinch, these should be his priorities: 

A) The takedown. If at all feasible, the takedown should be the primary goal of the challenger.

B) If it is truly impossible for the fighter to get a takedown from the clinch—the difference in strength and skill is too big—then the secondary goal is to score points from the clinch. Knees to the leg and light punches that can be thrown from a tight clinch should be the primary strikes.

C) If Silva is moments away from working his way out of the clinch, and a takedown still isn't feasible, then the challenger should throw at least one big strike as he works his way out.  At least get something out of getting the clinch in the first place.

How to Fight from Top Position

When Silva ends up on his back, he is at his weakest. He has never been strong at finding his way back up to his feet, rarely utilizes sweeps, and isn't a skilled enough submission artist to fully compensate for these deficiencies.

This is the guide for dealing with Silva in all but the last round:

A) Pass, pass, pass, finish. No methodical ground and pound from half guard or guard.  Keep passing.  Get into the best possible position and end the fight from there. Ground fighters who lean toward submissions should hunt for submissions, even at the risk of losing positioning. Fighters who are less submission-inclined should hunt for a referee stoppage. Continued, unanswered strikes will stop the fight, regardless of whether the strikes are particularly hard or damaging. Strikes from mount or the crucifix position are optimal in forcing a referee stoppage.

B) Pass, pass, pass, damage. Maybe the fighter in question won't have the power or technique to finish Silva. If this is the case, he should try to get the best position he can and do damage from there. Better positions will be easier to maintain and easier to do damage from, and can lead to winning rounds.

C) Just hit the guy. If Silva's guard is too tight and can't be passed, just go for punch output. It is important to hit Silva consistently. The low strike-volume approach Nate Marquardt took that resulted in the fight being stood up did not work out well for him. If the fighter is particularly powerful, he can try to win with powerful punches from within Silva's guard. But this isn't very feasible.

The reason for the heavy finishing emphasis is both because of Silva's improved takedown defense and because Silva only needs seconds to turn a fight around completely. He is guaranteed seconds at the beginning of each round and after every failed takedown attempt. Taking down Anderson Silva is no longer so easy that focusing primarily on holding position on each successful attempt is a viable strategy.

The dynamic changes slightly in the last round. If the challenger is winning on points and takes Silva down, and Silva has thus far been unable to stand up when down, the challenger should just focus on holding him down. Passing into the easiest position to do this if possible is advisable. The fighter should just do what he can to keep Silva on his back for the rest of the fight.

Be Ready to Be Hit

This may seem obvious, but part of the reason Silva is such a dangerous striker is because fighters are hit from angles they aren't expecting. Silva dropped Griffin and Okami with a jab.  This isn't because he has superhuman strength. It's because the blow came out of nowhere and caught both fighters off balance.

The hardest punch is the punch you don't see coming. If a fighter sees a punch coming, he is prepared to take damage and mitigates that damage. If not, then we see classic Silva downs.

The trick in such situations is to be constantly prepared to take a hit. It may be hard to hold this awareness passively, so a fighter can instead opt to brace himself a counter every single time he punches.  Keeping an eye on Silva's hands, rather than his head, when he keeps his hands down is another good way to deal with Silva's sudden and powerful strikes.

Silva's knees are also unpredictable. Sonnen probably didn't have any clue that Silva would try to knee him from that position. Flying knees aimed at Maia and Lutter were thrown as instinctively as he would throw punches. He tends to throw them at opponents circling close to the cage or backed up against the cage. If the challenger is unable to stay constantly aware of times Silva could throw his powerful knees, he should at least be especially careful when he is near the cage.

How to Strike

Every fighter has his own strengths and weaknesses in the realm of striking. While Silva's theoretical challenger should never strike for the sake of striking against Silva, he may need to do it for brief periods to get Silva's thoughts off of takedowns.

Any striker, regardless of style, as discussed earlier, should be ready to be hit. This is especially true whenever a striker moves in for a punch or throws a big swing.

But what's most important when striking with Silva is to have as disjointed a rhythm as possible.

Against a strong counter striker, having a clear striking rhythm is a disadvantage. It was only several minutes into his second fight with Franklin, and his fight with Griffin, that Silva began his incredible matrix-like movements. He needed to learn the rhythm of his opponents first.

So the challenger shouldn't just "let his hands go", as he might have been taught to do. The challenger should do something to make his rhythm difficult to follow if he is forced to strike with Silva for more than 30 seconds at a time. Something as simple as switching stances and throwing leg kicks for the first time in the fight could reset Silva's attempts to dissect his opponent's rhythm. And it is safer to go for takedowns after Silva is forced to readjust his timing and responses to anticipated strikes.

Over a longer period of time, Silva may be able to read through all of the fake rhythms and idiosyncrasies that were crafted to disgruntle him. But that extra time can be very valuable in the context of a 5-round title fight. 

Final Thoughts

1) The crowd wants the challenger to get knocked out, and the challenger shouldn't be deterred by the boos that will likely come from executing this strategy or a strategy similar to this one.

2) The challenger in question will, inevitably, be hit. He will probably be hit rather hard. It is important for the challenger to not let moments like these keep him from executing the game plan.

3) Pride is temporary. A win is forever. Such a thorough and strict methodology for beating Silva may not sit well with very capable strikers or crowd-pleasing fighters. But a win over Silva would make it all worth it.

4) If a fighter is really a better striker than Silva, or thinks he is, he should just ignore the gameplan devised here entirely—until he gets knocked down. While someday there may be a better striker than Silva, everyone who has thought himself to be Silva's superior on the feet has been proven completely wrong. Caution is advised when assessing one's striking abilities to be better than Silva's.

Most Capable Challengers

These are the five UFC fighters that I think are most capable of defeating Silva at middleweight.

5) Mark Munoz — Persistent fighter with very good ground and pound.

4) Michael Bisping — A good striker that takes few hits and is an underrated grappler.

3) George St.Pierre — A good striker with great movement and good kicks. A fantastic grappler with fantastic top control, but a poor finisher and undersized middleweight

2) Chael Sonnen — A fast and technically proficient boxer. A great wrestler with strong top control, but a poor finisher with slight weakness to submissions

1) Rashad Evans — A fast and powerful striker with good head movement, and a great wrestler.

Your Thoughts

And thus concludes my complete breakdown of how to defeat Anderson Silva.

Do you have any disagreements? Do you think I am overlooking one of Silva's weaknesses, or perhaps overestimating one of Silva's strengths?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section!