They say it’s better to burn out than fade away. “They” of course are those of us who, by simply being alive to utter such a statement, clearly have no experience in the subject we just offered our advice on. “They” are BS'er's – expert swimmers who never got in a pool, as Matt Serra would say. And besides, isn’t that saying just lifted from a Neil Young song, anyway?
My mind wanders, but the point is that, as a follower of the sport and not a participant in it, I am “they” in this scenario. I’m the Laimon lemon. And therefore, I’m not really qualified to speak on the increasingly-depressing, all too common caricature of a broken warhorse that Wanderlei Silva has become. None of us are, really, but following his completely foreseeable withdrawal from UFC 175 (and subsequent, absolutely bogus defense for skipping his drug test), we all seem more than willing to play Ellis Redding to his Andy Dufresne, don’t we?
Wanderlei Silva is not in a great place right now. Anyone who saw his coaching run on TUF Brazil 3 knows this. Anyone unfortunate enough to suffer through his recent batch of vlogs knows this. Silva, a guy who has always come off as a genuinely grateful and plain happy person *outside* of the Octagon, has let his violent in-ring persona consume him like something out of a goddamned Robert Louis Stevenson novel. And worse, even his most loyal fans are getting fed up with the act. At the TUF 3 Brazil Finale last week, the mere mention of his name drew a chorus of boos from the Brazilian crowd. Think about that for a second. On a show where the opposing coach was Chael freaking Sonnen, Wanderlei somehow came out looking the worse of the two.
Is mean old Chael Sonnen to blame for Wanderlei’s descent into madness? Or maybe the unexpected death of his father two years ago? Is something more sinister, more chemical (as Chael would likely suggest) the root cause? Or could it simply be that the near 20-year fight veteran, the scariest man in MMA from 1999 to 2006, is bitter over the fact that his legendary career is coming to a close?
It’s hard to tell, really, but hearing that Silva might have literally sprinted away from his random drug test last Saturday sure fuels the latter theory. In any case, Silva’s withdrawal signals a tragic realization for fans of the former PRIDE killer: “The Axe Murderer” has lost his edge.
Sure, you could argue that Wandy didn’t have much of an edge left before this latest scandal, having suffered 4 knockout losses and 6 total defeats in his past 10 contests. But there was still an edge there, dammit. Enough of an edge to power him past the likes of Cung Le, Michael Bisping, and Brian Stann, at least. At the bare minimum, Wanderlei Silva has always been lauded as a perpetual gamer, a guy who would fight anyone, at any weight, at the drop of a hat. A guy who might’ve received favorable treatment from PRIDE matchmakers and referees in his prime, maybe, but certainly not someone who ducked fights. Wanderlei always showed up. Wanderlei always threw down. And win or lose, Wanderlei would always fight until he could no longer.
The haunting façade associated with Silva now stripped away, an angry, mentally-unstable husk of a former great is apparently all that remains. Wanderlei Silva, like so, so many combat sports athletes before him, has stuck around just long enough to overstay his welcome. He’s become a parody of himself. He’s outlived his legacy, and it’s a damn shame to see him go out like this.
When I say “outlived his legacy,” I am obviously speaking in the figurative. As a lifelong follower of his career, I wish only the best for Silva and his family, which makes it all the more difficult to see him slowly fade into irrelevance on account of his own stubborn pride. Can you imagine how Silva’s career would have been viewed in retrospect had he retired after the first Rich Franklin fight? The Cung Le fight? Hell, the Brian Stann fight? Talk about a fitting end, Silva vs. Stann was quite literally the culmination of Wanderlei’s entire career – a brutal, tooth-and-nail slugfest featuring a violent finish in front of a legion of Japanese fans. It was as poetic a moment as you will see in this damn sport.
But MMA ain’t no fairy tale world, to loosely quote a cinema icon. Despite solidifying his place in the annals of MMA history ten times over, Silva decided to forge ahead. Like Alexander or Napoleon before him, he simply could not be satisfied with the empire he had built. He needed to press on, to reach further. And as a result, Silva has made it harder and harder for us to remember him for who he was, rather than who he’s become. Simply put, there’s a reason why Chris Lytle is almost universally held in a better light than Ken Shamrock despite being a far less significant fighter in the grand scheme of things, and it comes down to restraint.
Wanderlei Silva defeats Brian Stann by knockout at Saitama Super Arena in Japan.
Ben Fowlkes of MMAJunkie recently came to a similar epiphany when lamenting the slow demise of Royce Gracie.
“It’s kind of amazing how much damage Royce Gracie manages to do to his own legacy, even years after the matter should have been settled,” wrote Fowlkes. “It would be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing for those of us who he used to mean so much to.”
The same can be said about Silva, albeit for different reasons. While Gracie has seemingly been making it a goal to actively destroy his credibility with defamatory statements aimed at his own family and ill-timed confrontations with decade-old rivals in recent years, Silva has opted to go down the punch-drunk, street-fighting-then-angrily-vlogging route of irrelevance. He’s resorted to on-set brawls and filmed confrontations at Mr. Olympia events to hype up his once fearful persona, rather than allow his skills to do the talking for him. As Fowlkes wrote about Royce, Wanderlei simply needs to stop. Stop with the schoolyard bully stares. Stop with the vitriol-filled vlogs. Stop fighting a war with dignity that you cannot possibly win. If you “fight for your fans” by your own admission, Wanderlei, then listen to our cries and just stop already, while there are still a considerable number of us left.
As it stands, we’re not sure if we will ever see Wanderlei fight in the UFC again. The Nevada State Athletic Commission’s not sure. Dana White’s not sure. I doubt Wanderlei is even sure. But if this is truly it, what a heartbreaking end it would be, to see a pioneer of the sport and one of its biggest stars -- an inspirational fighter and near 50-fight veteran with roots stretching from Brazil to Nevada -- chased out of MMA’s premiere organization amidst a shameful war of words and a drug test scandal. His actions in recent months wouldn’t be enough to shatter his standing in the MMA world completely, not by a long shot, but they surely aren’t doing anything to help it.
A big part of me hopes that Wanderlei receives another fight in the UFC before retiring with some semblance of his pride intact. But another, bigger part of me feels that granting Silva another shot will only increase the rate at which he is plummeting. Because although I miss seeing Chris Farley light up the big screen, or the music of Darrell Abbott, I’m even more elated that I never lived to see them truly self-destruct, to descend into mediocrity. It’s a selfish conceit, I’m aware, but something I find myself thinking more each day as legends like Wanderlei fall from grace by no one’s hands but their own.
Perhaps “they” are right.
