There was a time when Anderson Silva would have eaten his UFC 208 opponent, Derek Brunson, alive.
That's no knock on Brunson, who is slotted at No. 8 in the UFC rankings. It's just that, well, this is Anderson Silva we are talking about. The man who lived in the matrix, who re-engineered supposedly useless techniques into knockout shots, who could spot his opponent 23 minutes and a few hundred punches and still find a way to win.
That Anderson Silva would have seen Brunson's takedown coming from a mile away, stuffed it with extreme prejudice and landed a laser pointer of a right cross to the jaw. And that would have been that. He was that kind of automatic.
These days, however, Silva's performances are anything but certain. He hasn't officially won a fight since October 2012, and in his last match, Daniel Cormier dominated him in a lopsided unanimous decision.
Most of his recent history—including a failed drug test in 2015—is a study in late-career struggle, which should not come as a major surprise for anyone who has watched final acts. On Saturday, Silva (33-8, one no-contest) will be two months shy of his 42nd birthday, an age by which nearly every great has already retired or long passed an expiration date.
But Silva has always been something of a riddle, and that has been mirrored by the twilight of his career, with results that can be interpreted in ways that sprout optimism.
Sure, his knockout loss to Chris Weidman back in 2013 was decisive, but everything since then has come with an asterisk. The rematch ended with a Silva injury. After that, he beat Nick Diaz on points, only to have his win wiped out by the Nevada Athletic Commission after failing a post-fight drug test.
From there, he lost to Michael Bisping in a mildly disputed decision, during which he nearly knocked out the champ. Most recently, he was shut out by Cormier, but that bout was contested at light heavyweight, a division above Silva's natural home—and against its reigning champion to boot.
To supporters, these are results that can easily be spun. To them, the winless streak doesn't explain the whole truth of what has happened or of the circumstances that directly affected it.
Controversy or not, that's a growing collection of fights that did not end as they might have in years gone by.
Against Brunson, barring something completely preposterous, Silva will no longer find that benefit of the doubt. He won't have it because Brunson isn’t Bisping or Diaz or Cormier. He's never reached the greatness of most of Silva's recent opponents. For him, Chris Leben and Lorenz Larkin are his best career wins; Silva would be his first major scalp.
The disparity in reputations between Silva and Brunson is huge, about as wide as any you could possibly find in the modern-day UFC. That dynamic has led many to question the purpose of the matchup. Does the UFC see Silva as a stepping stone for Brunson? Is it hoping to get Silva back in the win column? Did it just throw together whatever it could for him to add some star power to UFC 208? The last of those is probably the most accurate.
Still, it seems a major departure for a man who hasn't faced an opponent with a similarly low profile since he defended the belt against Yushin Okami in 2011.
"I just want to have fun and do what I love now," Silva said during a recent scrum interview in Brazil. "I have no pressure. I think I've been through all the phases of the sport. I won, I lost, I got injured. Now I get to do what I love, with my truth, without worrying about what people will say or things like that."
The pressure might be lessened, but it can't be gone completely. Nearing 42, he has to know that the end is near, that he has only a handful of walks to the Octagon left. Maybe less.
But the thing is, in this new-era UFC, a win could change things significantly.
Silva is still an important name in Brazil and a known one in world MMA circles. He can still sell tickets and pay-per-views. That kind of power matters now perhaps more than ever.
So if he beats Brunson and reminds the world that he essentially knocked out the current champ—Bisping was saved by the bell after a third-round knockdown—he can reset that retirement clock, and that's no small thing.
A loss? There may be no coming back from it in any meaningful sense. He may continue to get fights, but it will serve as the final, indisputable sign that his time as an elite is done.
At his age, he may no longer harbor championship desires, something he acknowledged during his aforementioned interview. But winning never gets old. And when you are the greatest winner MMA has ever known, if you can’t do that anymore, what do you have left? We all know the answer to that.
No one wants to see yet another all-time great quietly and sadly be pushed off toward retirement. On Saturday night, Silva either shoves back or continues a decline that will then be clearly and definitively irreversible.
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