UFC 97, which took place this past weekend, has provided plenty of topics for the blogger who is wishing to run up the number of comments on his site. Specifically, Anderson Silva’s performance against Thales Leites has come under heavy fire. Despite completely stifling his opponent’s offense and breaking the UFC record for consecutive wins, the champion has found himself in a firestorm of criticism.
Yesterday, Anderson Silva’s manager, Ed Soares was a guest on MMAJunkie Radio. He responded to many of the criticisms that have been hurled at his client.
Ed Soares wasted little time getting to the main crux of his point, “If the challenger does not come in to take the champion’s belt, then what else can the champion do?”
He continued to defend Silva’s fight, “People have gotten spoiled seeing him finish fights so quickly. Sometimes things don’t go that way – like it doesn’t happen. I honestly don’t think it was a bad fight. I think he went out there and performed. He was attacking all five rounds, but why, just because he didn’t go to the ground with him? That’s why it wasn’t a great fight?”
In an interview with Cagewriter’s Steve Coefield, Dana White said he was going to sit down with Silva and his management after the press conference. According to Soares, this conversation never took place. He explained, “No, we haven’t [spoken] yet. Dana Called me yesterday when I was at the airport and I said, ‘You know Dana, let’s go back home and we’d like to watch the fight and maybe you’d like to take another look at the fight and come up with a plan.”
Soares had suggestions for the UFC if they want to see Silva in a more entertaining fight, “If they want to see an exciting fight put someone to charge him and fight. It is not the champion’s responsibility to fall into the challenger’s game to make it seem like an interesting fight.”
During the interview, Soares was asked if Silva felt upset with the fan reaction. Soares explained, “There comes a point where he feels bad that people are unhappy with his performance, on the other hand we got a lot of emails from fans saying he fought a great fight.”
A report by the Fight Network accused Soares of editing Silva’s speech to make it more fan friendly. To that end Soares said, “He did say those things. You know, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make you happy. You guys are the one’s paying my salary.’ That’s what he said. I’m not a professional translator. I try to translate what he says.” Soares continued, “I’m not going in there saying, ‘if he says something wrong I’m going to fix it.”
Josh Gross commented in his live coverage of the event that Silva rubbed Vaseline from his face on his body. Soares found this observation to be a tad ridiculous, “How much Vaseline can you actually get from your face? I mean I think it is ridiculous. I didn’t notice it that night. When I watched it last night on the Internet, I was like he touched his face, but I think that was just people trying to come up with something.”
Finally, when asked about Silva’s reaction to UFC president Dana White saying he was embarrassed by the fight, Soares said, “It bums him out when he hears Dana White say that he was embarrassed.” However, Soares disagreed with the comment, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m embarrassed for the people who didn’t understand a technical fight.”
By: Richard Mann