BY MICHAEL OWENS
Late yesterday (Friday), the UFC announced Thiago Silva’s next fight via its twitter news account:
The light heavyweight scrap was set to act as the co-main event for UFC Fight Night 35 in Atlanta.
However, not even 24 hours later the fight was off:
There’s no word yet on what caused Silva to pull out, but this is the latest in a long line of misfortunes that have hamstrung a promising career.
The Brazilian entered the UFC and quickly rattled off five stoppage wins, establishing himself as a contender at 205 pounds.
A loss to Lyoto Machida derailed his title hopes at UFC 94, but he bounced back with a KO of Keith Jardine at UFC 102 and booked himself a shot at Rashad Evans at the UFC 108 New Year spectacular.
Silva was mean, powerful and skilled on the ground. He had and has a great look and fought like the tattooed maniac everyone expected him to be.
He beat opponents into the ground and mocked them for their failure, finishing every fight with a trademark throat slash which was trite, but undeniably badass.
He was everything you could want to create a marketable fighter
However, things started to go wrong.
UFC 108 was the victim of Rampage’s decision to go and shoot the A Team movie, meaning that Silva was not the man everyone wanted to see fight Rashad.
That event was also savaged by other injuries, denying fans the chance to see Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin and Anderson Silva vs. Vitor Belfort.
To make matters worse, the Evans/Silva fight was a bit of a dud.
Silva got tired and couldn’t pounce on his opponent when he had the opportunity to strike in the third round.
Following the fight, he sat on the sidelines for a year due to a back injury and then had his comeback victory over Brandon Vera taken away because of a failed urine test.
He had used banned substances to help the pain in his back so he didn’t have to pull out of the fight.
The former Chute Boxe product was suspended and It was a full 15 months before he returned to action as cannon fodder for Alexander Gustafsson in Sweden.
He then came back with an unimpressive win over Stanislav Nedkov in Macau, but that result was overturned as well due to a positive marijuana test.
After his return from another suspension, the Blackzilians fighter finally looked like he was back to his best against Rafael Feijão, but four months later he was out of shape, missing weight and plodding to an uninspiring win over a faded Matt Hammill.
Thiago Silva is now 31 and should have several good years left in his career, but unfortunately it seems as though he might go down as one of the great MMA what if? men if he can’t stay healthy, obey the rules and maintain a consistent level of performance.
UFC Fight Night 35 takes place on January 15 and will be headlined by a middleweight fight between Luke Rockhold and Costa Philippou.
