Anderson Silva steps up to save UFC 153
By BOB EMANUEL JR. | Scripps Howard News Service
With cancellations of cards in both the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Strikeforce in recent months, Zuffa LLC — the parent company of both promotions — could hardly afford another scratched event.
Saturday night’s UFC 153 event underwent drastic changes since it was first announced, and the main event was scrapped after UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo was forced to withdraw last month with a foot injury.
Brazilian UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva stepped in, however, and will headline the event at the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro against light heavyweight Stephan Bonnar.
“Definitely, he’s got that responsibility on his back, he’s part of the UFC family and he believes that everyone can do what they can do to help,” Silva said through translator Derek Lee. “It was a case that the event might have been canceled, and he’s just doing his part. If he felt that he couldn’t do that or his team, everyone came together and said that he wasn’t in a condition to that he wouldn’t have done it. But in this situation he felt like he could step up and made the show and avoided cancellation.”
Silva, who has won 16 consecutive fights, will move up in weight class to light heavyweight for the event. The opportunity to fight Bonnar, who helped launch the sport’s popularity through his main event fight with Forrest Griffin in the finale of the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” helped motivate Silva to accept the fight.
“I believe this is going to be one of the biggest fights in UFC and in my career,” Silva said through Lee. “(I’m) very honored and happy for him to have accepted this fight in the same condition as not having so much time to train. And he believes this fight’s going to really make both of the guys’ careers take off, and it’s one of those things that people are going to turn on the TV and see the UFC champion fighting a guy who’s got one of the longest histories in the UFC as well.”
Bonnar, likewise, was motivated by the chance to fight Silva, who UFC president Dana White routinely calls the greatest mixed martial artist of all time.
“I felt like I’ve been in some big fights on big stages,” Bonnar said. “But, of course, the one that had the big impact was the first fight with Forrest on a relatively small stage in terms of the state that we fought in, and I mean it was a new show. But yeah, that ended up getting more attention than the big pay-per-view cards I fought on since then. So yeah, a chance to fight the greatest fighter, pound for pound in the world and in a place like Brazil is just crazy, feels like I’m in a movie.”
Former UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira will fight Dave Herman in the co-main event. Other bouts on the main card include light heavyweights Glover Teixeira vs. Fabio Maldonado, welterweights Erick Silva vs. Jon Fitch, light heavyweights Wagner Prado vs. Phil Davis and welterweights Demian Maia vs. Rick Story.
The preliminaries, which can be seen live on FX at 2 p.m. HST, include: featherweights Rony Jason vs. Sam Sicilia; lightweights Gleison Tibau vs. Francisco Trinaldo; featherweights Diego Brandao vs. Joey Gambino; and welterweights Sergio Moraes vs. Renee Forte.
Two additional preliminaries — middleweights Luiz Cane vs. Chris Camozzi and lightweights Cristiano Marcello vs. Reza Madadi — can be seen at www.facebook.com/UFC/ an hour before the FX portion of the card.
QUICK JABS: Former Bellator Fighting Championships lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez will face Patricky “Pitbull” Freire in the main event of Bellator 76 on Friday at Caesars Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Alvarez, who will likely sign with the UFC later this year, won the inaugural lightweight title at the end of Bellator’s first season in 2009 and held it for more than two years before he lost to current champion Michael Chandler. The rest of the main card, which can be seen live at 8 p.m. EDT and on tape delay at 8 p.m. PDT, features the featherweight quarterfinals. The match-ups are Rad Martinez vs. Nazareno Malegarie, Akop Stepanyan vs. Wagnney Fabiano, Mike Richman vs. Jeremy Spoon and Shahbulat Shamhalaev vs. Cody Bollinger. The preliminaries, which can be seen live at spike.com at 1 p.m. HST and continue after the event, include: featherweights Jason Fischer vs. Kyle Prepolec; lightweights Chad Laprise vs. Ainsley Robinson; middleweights Simon Marini vs. Ali Mokdad; welterweights A.J. Matthews vs. Domonic O’Grady; and featherweights Magomedrasul Khasbulaev vs. Nayeb Hezman … John Dodson became the top contender for the UFC bantamweight title when he defeated Jussier Formiga over the weekend. Dodson will likely face champion Demetrious Johnson in early 2013.
