Thursday, June 15, 2006


Fujita Vs. Silva
Oh boy oh boy.

Unstoppable force vs. Immovable object. Although a more apt comparison would be "a fighter whose will to fight is only matched by his aggression" vs "a fighter whose will to fight is only matched by his skull's thickness".

Neither one of these guys will quit. Look at any number of silva fights, where he's been smashed right in the face, dropped, yet kept trying to kill the other guy. The best one is the shot Tito dropped him with, because it seriously looks like silva is about to try to bite off his ankles after face-planting. The guy will fight you until you make it physically impossible for him to do it. Same thing with Fujita; he's never been stunned like Silva has, but he's walked through vicious prolonged beatings vs. shamrock and thompson, and eaten monster shots from fedor and crocop. This fight could get ugly, with silva slowly smashing all the skin of fujita's face and fighting a screaming skull. Or Fujita could just deliver another brutal mugger beating like he did to Sapp, or just stretch silva like happened to Ibrahim.

Both of these fighters bring an incredible amount of power to the table.

Wand's power punching power and ruthlessness are off the scale. Knocking out Quinton Jackson is no mean feat, as many people forget. Rampage is a guy who took huge shots from Kevin Randleman (who has massive punching power if not technique, ask Ninja or Crocop) and Igor (nothing need be said) and kept fighting--even in the Shogun stoppage his head was clear, he just gave up due to his rib injury. And Kondo has only been finished in a couple of his 70+ fights. Silva does this by simply beating a man with everything he can, until that man stops moving. Silva punches extremely hard, and anyone who doubts that he can stop any man in the business given the chance (Hunt and Noguiera included) is a fool. Fujita may have a hard head, but he's still mortal, and an accumulation of strikes will put him out of this fight if he lets Silva tee off. And he just might, lacking a defense other than his football-helmet like head and wrestling ability. It's become fashionable to criticise silva's aggression after his fights with Arona, but it is extremely difficult to fight aggressively when a man is pining you to the floor as hard as he can. Which may happen again vs. Fujita, given the Yvel fight. Put Silva in there with a BJJ guy with no wrestling or an inferior striker, and he will throw until his arms fall off, I guarantee.

Fujita's power is his strength and arm power. This guy muscled SAPP around the ring, and stood up to James thompson too. He will just keep coming at guys and grab hold of them, making them deal with his strength, until he has worn them down and can smash them with an extremely primitive array of strikes that look like the monkey smashing the other with a bone in the "Dawn of Man" segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. You know I'm right. It's hard to gauge against a monster like Thompson, but in his last fight Fujita didn't seem to have the same kind of strength he used to, weighing in a good deal lighter too. Silva is extremely strong for a middleweight, but I think Fujita is still going to have little problem powering him around the ring, especially given that Silva's wrestling is about on par with Noguiera's.

The thing so many people ignore about Fujita is that he has extreme KO power. Look at what he did to Fedor's head in slow-motion, or the punch that finally put down Thompson, or the one that nearly killed Ibrahim. All of those punches were thrown starting down at Fujita's hip, but he didn't turn into them or use his leg strength. He simple picked up his hand, and used his awesome upper body strength to sling it to the other side of the guy's head. This guy can KO a man easily, and he's hard-nosed enough to punch through punches and rely on his chin. It's entirely feasible that we see Wanderlei dropped by such a punch and then hammerfisted into unconciousness.

However I feel the most likely outcome is that Wanderlei uses his superior speed to set up strike after strike, and unloads an unholy barrage to eventually stop the fight, either on a cut or a TKO, when Fujita gets disoriented and doesn't defend himself. I do not expect him to knock Fujita out cold, although of Fujita finishes him, that's how it's going to be. If this becomes a brawl, both men have suffered massive cuts before, especially Silva, so one could open up again and create another unsatisfying cut stoppage. Given both guy's will to fight, and Silva's reasonable ability to counter groundwork and get back up, I expect this will be a fight, not another Yvel control session from Fujita, and Wanderlei is a finish-or-be-finished fighter when he's not on his back. But we never know what will happen until it happens, and that's why they fight.

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