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Either he caved because of the Pride/UFC aquisition, or because his management team was eating his profits and he realized that boxing promoters don’t belong in MMA.

I think he caved because he can no longer play one organization against the other…… and….. he’s just not that good anyway.

I hope Dana pays him less for being an az.

YO COOL NOW I CAN SEE BRANDON VERA’S A SS GET KNOCKED OUT IM PLEASED

JUST one more guy to get knocked out by Tim Silva…. right Patrick?

U KNOW I DOTN LIKE TIM DENNIS BUT MAN VERA JUST PUT A NASTY TASTE IN MY MOUTH AND YES I WOULD LOVE TO SEE TIM ROCK HIS WORLD…VERA IS THE BIGGEST SUCK BAG IN MY OPINION… RIGHT DENNIS????

Yes!

Dana should start a new organization for losers like Vera called the SBC!

Suck Bag Championship

The Shamrocks would be first to sign!

Followed by Elvis and Leben.

DENNIS Y DO U NOT LIKE LEBEN??

@Patrick

I like Leben, but he doesn’t have any skills. He just hits hard.

I hoped he would come to his senses. The UFC is obviously the best place to be right now. Brandon is a good fighter now he will have the chance to prove if he is a great figter. It just adds more depth to the already beefed up HW division. Even with the alliances I don’t see how the other promotions are going to compete with UFC/Pride.

I AGREE DENNIS… WHAT ARE UR THOUGHTS ON JASON MCDONALD AND HOW SHI TTY HIS PERFORMANCE WAS WITH RICH

Jason was “put in his place” by a true champion.

Man, Vera sure has balls though calling out Mirko.

I used to like Vear a lot and think he is really talented. Another one of those cerebral fighters. He would call out Chuck all the time, and then, instead if working his way up and proving he deserved a shot at Chuck…he “disappeared”.

Chuch is going to have his work cut out for him untill he retires. After Rampage his oponents are going to get better. Now that the UFC has an abundace od stars to face off against him it’s pointless to have Griffin, Rashad or Jardine even be in the title picture now. I think Liddell’s win streak will end this year. Can’t wait to see Rua in the octagon I think his agressive style will work well in the cage, not as much room for people to run. This will be the best year of fights ever.

YO I HOPE CRO C OP KICKS OFF VERAS HEAD!!!!

YO DENNIS… SO WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN IF RICH TOOK ANDERSON ON AGAIN DO U THINK?

i think franklin vs. silva 2 will go a lot like the first one but it might last longer like a full round or two. i think silva is better then franklin both standing and on the ground so rich will really have to step up his game to win this time around.

All Rich has to do is prepare, and he can “easily” take Silva. Just check out what the Piranha did…. perfect defense to the clench.

Ace is notibly smarter, stronger, and hits harder. He just wasn’t prepared last time.

The next time WILL be different.

as for vera calling out Cro Cop. What a joke!!!

.. but I can’t blame him for trying. What better way to get publicity, and try to win public opinion back after being such a loser.

Vera has lost whatever little reputation he gained. I think he will surely get booed the next time he steps in the Octagon. Dana has all the leverage now, unless Vera never really wanted ot fight the best guys in the first place and will be perfectly content with going smaller shows, earning less, and fighting inferior competition.

@Dennis
Haven’t seen you on here in a couple of days, must have been on vacation or something. Looks like Chuck just got a whole lot more competition. We may see the Liddell vs Shogun sooner than expected. What do you think his chabces are? If he can beat these guys he will have proved he is the best and go down in history or if these guys come in and whip him it will show that the UFC just didn’t have the talent to challenge him at the time. Either way we will find out soon.

As far as Silva/Franklin 2 goes, whoever thinks the outcome will be any different, must be smoking whatever Nick Diaz and Diego Sanchez have been smoking. Anderson Silva is a far superior fighter than Rich Franklin will ever be. Franklin will get dominated once again. You will see how many future UFC champs will be former Pride fighters.

I have to agree. Rich didn’t show anything in the first fight that would lead me to believe he can win. If the fight does happen to go to the ground he’s in real trouble. Silva submitted Travis pretty easily and he is way better than Franklin on the ground. I like Rich but I think like Couture vs Liddell he just found someone with a style he can’t figure out or overcome.

YEA ANDERSON IS A FREAKIN MAD DOG

theres alot of topics in this thread. Let me start with Vera, did he ever get his million dollar payday we were discussing last month?? Cuz if he got paid, then he did the right thing, and hes coming back to the UFC anyways hehe. I dunno why you guys are hating on Vera, the guys looking out for #1, he out to make the most money possible, thats why he wants to fight crocop, win or lose, his Pockets are getting fatter. If he actually wins? hes comin up like the jeffersons!

Franklin vs Silva 2

Im surprised you guys are counting franklin out so fast, Dennis is the only one who i agree with. To say that Anderson is out of franklins league is a BIT much for the outcome of one fight. Really, I thik rich took the fight lightly and being the champ probably got to his head. I dont say this purely out of speculation tho, i have reasons for thinking this way.

When rich was losing the war in the clinch, he didnt break the clinch, and this is NOT because he doesnt know how, or because anderson has some kind of magical clinch thats unescapable. Its because Rich didnt WANT to lose the war in the clinch, hes always dominated his opponents in the clinch. I think there was some ego there, and by the time he realized it, anderson had already hammered him to the body with those knees. Like what happened to Hughes, his game plan was, ill try and stand with him, then if i start losing the standup ill take him down. The problem with that is that, it only takes one shot to knock your *** out, it might be too late when you decide you need to change gears.

What am i really trying to say with all this? I think it will be a GREAT fight next time, i believe rich can win, anderson could also win, but dont think silva will destroy him like that again.

If the Chuck/ Shogun fight happens soon, the ICEMAN cometh.

If they wait long enough, Shogun will outlive him.

I should remind you, never count out an old man.

Remember what Randy did Tim.

Franklin is a FIGHTER, not a MARTIAL ARTIST. That is what set’s Silva apart. The guy has a blackbelt in Taekwondo, Mui Tai, and a purple belt in BJJ. Sorry, but brawler/scrappers like Forrest Griffin and Rich Franklin cannot compete with skilled MMA like Silva, Penn, Rush, ect ect.

@MAD

sales trip to John Deere….

alright iv got to get in on this silva vs franklin ,tell me someone please why has franklin been coming out looking like he just got his azzzz beat mainly with black eyes what the hell he doesnt have the same look that he has had in the past even in the macdonald fight he just doesnt look there and for people saying franklin is stronger than sylvia just cuz his muscles are bigger doesnt mean hes stronger personnally id rather have the physique of sylva long and bonney great for knees and elbows.Now for shogun vs liddel this fight needs to happen now cuz the next time liddel loses i guarantee liddels age is going to be the first thing people blame there going to forget how good liddel was and blame his age this fight along with the cro crop ,fedor, vera fight need to happen soon or the icemans gonna get to old

i have to say one more thing why is bj penn and jens pulver after the tuf 5 finishes gonna fight for a title shot why ok they were good in the past but now for sure peen sucks and pulver got koed by a kid i dont care what uv done in the past u also have to pay ur does now and they havent
EXAMPLE
should pedro rizzo come back to the ufc and immediatlly get a title shot if not then why should these guys

i think you need to elaborate a bit mmakansas, theyre all fighters and theyre all martial artists. Its just to what degree of experience they have, usually based on how long theyve been doing it. When your talking about brawlers, i start thinking about guys like Tank, who you could say is definately not a martial artist. I definately wouldnt put Franklin OR Griffin in the same category as Tank. Please explain what you meant bro.

Franklin is probably the “smartest” fighter in the octagon…..period.

with that being said, along with his athletic abilities, hard hitting strikes, and a DVD player, it’s easy to beat Silva.

LOL JENS PULVAR GOT HIS A SS KICKED LOL

I don’t agree with everything Diik says, but here’s another time I do.

“should pedro rizzo come back to the ufc and immediatlly get a title shot if not then why should these guys”

@BVRASP,

I definitely do not want to catagorize myself as a “Vera hater” because I really did like the guy and after all is said and done, who will ever REALLY know exactly what happend with his managerial negotiations with the UFC? no one. I was very excited to see a guy like him back then because a good HW was rare, however, so many things have changed in the last 6 months, that top HW are no longer an exctinct species. And, when it comes down to it, Vera always used to talk about fighting Chuck and now CroCop, but until he actually does it…I will continue to be a little hesitant in rooting for him. There are a lot of other guys out there willing to work their way up.

@BVRASP,

To say that Franklin took Silva lightly would indicate that Franklin is a complete idiot, which we all know is probably not true. Anytime a Pride guy came to the UFC, it is every opponents job to study everything there is about the guy. Before Silva ever made any headlines here, his reputation was long-standing in the international MMA community. If that was the case, Franklin deserved to lose his belt. I’m just sick of hearing the same excuse that a guy didn’t train hard enough. That either implies that he is havng easy fights set up for him, or he just doesn’t want to win anymore. I think Silva is a pioneer of sorts… because of him, I am positive that many of the UFC’s “domestic fighters” take their former Pride opponents much more seriously than before Silva came to town.

herecy!

@Amir

which is it?

Did Franklin & others UFC fighters take the Pride fighters seriously before Silva…….. or not?

UM DENNIS…. HOW BOUT THIS BOUT????
DIEGO AND GSP????

………easy one………………. GSP!

no competition.

Diego will be stoned.

YO DENNIS WHAT ABOUT THIS GSP VS SERRA FIGHT?

@Patrick

Serra is a joke!

another one that DOES NOT deserve a title shot.

OK DENNIS HOW ABOUT DIEGO AND HUGHES …. HOW ABOUT THAT

@Dennis:

BVRASP stated in #28:

“I thik rich took the fight lightly and being the champ probably got to his head. I dont say this purely out of speculation tho, i have reasons for thinking this way.”

Amir:

What I am saying is that Franklin will be beaten again because he is just an inferior fighter to Anderson Silva. Because of what Anderson Silva has done to embarrass both guys who were considered very tough (Leben & Franklin) so easily, I am sure that when any UFC fighter is about to fight a guy who fought for Pride, the UFC fighter will take him more seriously and train. I think Franklin DID take him seriously and just got beat by a better fighter and it will happen again. But, if someone chooses to believe otherwise, I explained a different scenario. This scenario, being that Franklin did not take him seriously…would make Franklin a complete moron who is clueless about the MMA world competition around him.

On another note, Rich Franklin has fought in other shows before he was ever a middleweight in the UFC. I doubt that any UFC fighter
does not pay attention to the other fighters in his weightclass fighting in other parts of the world. Thats just ignorance. For Franklin to have not had any knowledge that Anderson Silva existed and would one day be a potential opponent is as Mike Tyson would say “ludicrious”.

Does this make anything clearer to you Dennis?

@Amir

it might, except you concluded with “I think Silva is a pioneer of sorts… because of him, I am positive that many of the UFC’s “domestic fighters” take their former Pride opponents much more seriously than before Silva came to town.”

….which to me, means that the UFC fighters were not taking him serious before…. which is what BV was saying to begin with.

I personally, believe that Rich was just having an off night, and will come back with a vengeance…. poor anderson.

You should never even mention Leben in the same sentence with ACE!

@Patrick

Now there you have a fight!

Not that Matt is any less capable of beating Diego than Rush, but their fighting styles will complement each other to the point of “fanxtacy”….

Ok so I see where you got lost in the translation. In that sentence I was not directly referring to Silva, but I was referring to any Pride fighter that enters the Octagon. I am saying that now, every UFC fighter takes a former Pride fighter seriously (in general) not Anderson Silva specifically.

And, from my interpretation…that is not what BV was saying. From my pov it seems like he was saying that Franklin did not take Anderson Silva seriously.

heh ok let me clear this up,

BVRASP : “I thik rich took the fight lightly and being the champ probably got to his head. I dont say this purely out of speculation tho, i have reasons for thinking this way.”

(this was kind of my “intro” to what i wanted to focus on, i guess it didnt work cuz the intro seems to be what was focused on.)

BVRASP : “When rich was losing the war in the clinch, he didnt break the clinch, and this is NOT because he doesnt know how, or because anderson has some kind of magical clinch thats unescapable. Its because Rich didnt WANT to lose the war in the clinch, hes always dominated his opponents in the clinch. I think there was some ego there, and by the time he realized it, anderson had already hammered him to the body with those knees.”

(This was the main point i was getting at, Rich thought he would have dominated in the clinch and by the time he noticed he was wrong, it was too late.)

–> I certainly wouldnt suggest that Franklin didnt know who Anderson is, what hes accomplished and what hes capable of. For sure he studied the tapes and all that, especially as a champ, thats standard, if you didnt study your opponent during training, i suggest getting a new team of coaches and trainers.

This is why im saying underestimated Silva, or just over estimated himself, his game plan was obviously wrong and he hit a brick wall in the clinch.

Answer this question.. why didnt Rich break out of the clinch? if it wasnt about ego..

again I say……..off day.

Rich didn’t look like himself.

ill say this, its gon be a great fight next time. Rich will avoid the clinch situation and it will be a pure striking match. With the kind of skill and imagination and movement that both fighters have, Its gonna be craaaazy! very anticipated for that rematch!

The Hughes vs GSP too, that was another ego case, Why did hughes stand with GSP? cuz hes a moron and he didnt study his opponent? lol no.. Its because he wanted to stand with GSP..

As a general your supposed to use your strengths against your opponents weaknesses. This is assuming victory is your goal, but when your goal is not only victory, but glory, thats where you take unnecessary risks and you make yourself vulnerable. Its stupidity, but its willing stupidity lol

I definitely don’t think he was himself, he seemed exhausted and out of character but regardless…even if he was %100, I still do not think he could beat Anderson Silva. Are we going to keep saying these things about every fight? one guy didn’t seem right let’s let them fight 3 times to be sure…that’s not logical. Bottom line is, on the night Franklin needed to perform more than ever, he didn’t. Like almost every fighter, he had plenty of time to train, heal, whatever… I think many will agree that he still looked unimpressive against MacDonald…so it goes back to a discussion we had a while back about the welterweights where I was saying that a former champ should not get such an immediate rematch just because he was the champ. That was before the UFC even had Pride, now with even more fighters available, others need to be given the opportunity to prove themselves.

rich has been entering the ring exhausted for a while he aint the same anymore i dont know how hillbilly is taking riches side so sure that he will win sylvas standup is better than franklins and so is his ground games so even though any thing can happen in a fight hillbilly ur to sure and giving franklin to much credit and sylva not enough but u tend to do that
EXAMPLE
liddel vs rampage
now in my opinion a b list pride fighter could easily come to the ufc and make some noise or in other words anderson might not have done good in pride but its not cuz he aint good but cuz pride has better talent

I think we discuss fights because we can see what caused one fighter to win over the other, because theres ALWAYS a reason. Like he made a mistake or watever, just because someone loses a fight doesnt mean he “sucks”.

bvrasp i see what ur saying but some people on here have awesome opinions most of the time but then let some dumb sh*it pop out and i sit here and read and im like damn how can someone so insight full say something so fu*cken stupid
EXAMPLE
“along with his hard hitting strikes and a dvd player its easy to beat silva”
what the hell ur telling me rich “i was a math teacher college graduate”franklin wasnt smart enough to watch a couple of fights of silva ur nuts ur fu*ckin nuts he plain and simple got the sh*it beat out of him bad to me that fight was a discrace of a champion of the ufc any champ that takes any fight lightly is a discrace and deserves to get the azzz handed to them

Vera (or his manager) basically screwed up. Vera was in line for a title shot. Because of his hold out, he’s taken like 10 steps back in my opinion. Honestly I don’t even consider him in my Top 5 anymore.

If I were Dana, I’d send him to the WEC.

@richard

i think it amir just misinterpreted what i said about franklin, thats where the issue of him watching the tapes came up. Im sure nobody on this site believes that Franklin didnt watch the tapes, its crazy to think that.

Rich thought he had the advantage in the clinch, he underestimated Silva skills and learned the hard way. Instead of switching gears, he wanted to stay in the clinch when he could have escaped. I think the next fight will be MUCH more competative and either guy could win.

@Gatties or Dr.J

You guys know if Vera ever got his million bucks from that deal we were talking about when he left the UFC?

BVRASP
i wasnt talking about amir i was talking about hillbilly aka dennis he usually gots great things to say but then lets his azzzzz do the talking sometimes i have my favorites but i always try to look at were the other guy is coming from

alright guys im gonna play devils advocate but all this with vera is or was about money to say he belongs in the WEC is a little harsh the man can still fight and will still put azzzzz ezzzz in seats and is right up there in the lhw or the hw division just cuz he wanted more money doesnt make him a bad fighter right gatties u set me straight the other day when i was disappointed in franklin selling his stuff on ebay

i see a lot of you put a lot of stock in rich franklin and he is a great fighter but i dont think he is a better fighter then anderson. i read someone wrote franklin is stronger then silva and i just dont think that is true silva handled rich in the clinch pretty easy. i also read rich hits harder that could be true but not enough harder to make any real difference. i think the only way franklin can win against silva is to avoid getting hit by him at all costs but that will be hard to do against some who lands about 85% of the time.

@Diik

Here we go again. Seems I’ve been this way before!

Speaking about “talking out you az” Diik said…..and I quote,

“now in my opinion a b list pride fighter could easily come to the ufc and make some noise or in other words anderson might not have done good in pride but its not cuz he aint good but cuz pride has better talent”

So when a pot smoking, b level UFC fighter that dropped off the map, only surfacing to beat the shet out of the best Pride has to offer, I get it, that means Pride fighters are more talented….. my bad Gomi, I should have talked to Diik first to get the real scoop.

To anybody that hating on ACE, all I can say is you can’t judge a fighter so harshly for losing ONE FRICKIN FIGHT!

That goes for Matt too, remember he’s a LEGEND!