Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida: Friends Shouldn't Fight Friends

There`s been a lot of talk recently about whether friends and training partners should be forced to fight each other.

The debate centres around a possible match between Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva, who are probably the two best fighters at 205 pounds, and who have frequently stated that they will not fight each other.

But while a match between the two could possibly settle the debate over who is the better fighter, I am not convinced that forcing the two to fight would be a good idea.

If Machida and Silva were forced to fight each other, it is quite possible that it would be no better than a glorified sparring match, as both fighters pulled their punches, not really trying to finish the fight.

While I do believe that Machida and Silva are perhaps the two best fighters at 205, even perhaps far better than the rest of the fighters in the division, there are still interesting matchups for both fighters besides pitting them against each other.

Machida has yet to defend his title even once.  It is simply too early to say that he will automatically just beat the other fighters in the division.  A few years ago, people thought Georges St. Pierre was invincible.

Instead, he was taken out in quick fashion by Matt Serra.

The entire thing that fight proved is that just because a fighter is superior on paper does not mean that the fight should not take place.

Shogun Rua once destroyed Quinton Jackson back in his Pride FC days, so would it be truly unbelievable to imagine him defeating Machida?

And while Rampage's propensity to absorb leg damage might spell trouble for him against Machida, his wrestling, combined with one-punch knockout power, would still be a problem for Machida to solve.

There are other matchups that would also be interesting for Machida.

As for Anderson, I've already said in previous posts that I think people are getting a bit carried away over his destruction of Forrest.

Forrest Griffin fought with perhaps the worst gameplan possible against Anderson, and besides that, is not a particularly good stylistic match for the Middleweight champion.

It has only been a few years since Travis Lutter was mounted on top of Anderson, landing unanswerable blows before he made his sloppy and costly armbar attempt.

Is it really that hard to imagine some other fighter being able to get that position on Anderson and capitalizing on the opportunity?  I don't think so.

And even if Anderson and Lyoto keep on destroying the competition, I don't think that is entirely a bad thing.

It's not like they are dodging other fighters.  They say that they are training partners, and like brothers.

Recently, Lyoto has expressed some interest in fighting Brock Lesnar.  Clearly, Machida is not the type to dodge a challenge.

And when Vitor Belfort said that he'd rather not fight Anderson because they are somewhat friends, and both Brazilians, Anderson contradicted that notion, saying that he would have no problem fighting Vitor.