Contributor: Josh Hall
The Chris Weidman/Anderson Silva saga is finally over, and Weidman is still the UFC Middleweight Champion. He has two 2nd round TKO victories on his record over arguably the greatest fighter of all time, but a lot of the talk in the MMA world is about how he was “lucky” again and that his victory in the rematch means nothing because of the freak accident that ended the fight. I could not disagree more with these sentiments, and I want to look at his past few fights and look at what sets him apart from the rest of the division and show why he is a more than capable replacement to sit on the throne he has taken from Silva.
First of all I have to go into the ridiculous sentiment that Chris Weidman did not really win the fight against Anderson. While the end of the fight was a bizarre one that absolutely no one would ever wish upon Anderson, it was not just a matter of chance that occurred and went the way of the champion. Two things happened that directly led to the gruesome end of the fight that had nothing to do with luck or chance. Anderson Silva made a critical technical error and Weidman made a perfect defensive maneuver designed to also do damage.
When Silva threw the fateful kick that reverberated through the sports world he did not open his hips, which caused him to make contact with the wrong part of his leg. Instead of making contact with the top of his leg Silva hit with the side, which makes it significantly easier to snap. Almost one year earlier Bas Rutten released a short video discussing this very danger, and he does a really good job explaining why landing with the right part of the leg is so critical.
Silva’s improper technique came about at the worst possible time, as Weidman had trained extensively to defend the leg kicks Anderson had experienced so much success with in their first fight. The champion was fully prepared for the low kicks 
this time, and his plan involved doing damage while defending by using a specific type of kick check that Weidman refers to as “The Destruction”. More commonly known as a knee spike, the person checking the kick barely lifts their leg, if at all, to check it. The impact is taken just below the knee at the very top of the shin, and is incredibly painful if used correctly. Weidman had this to say after the fight:
“The most important thing we focused on for this fight camp was stopping those leg kicks. So, (head trainer) Ray Longo, he’s actually broke a guy’s leg using what he calls ‘The Destruction’, which is knee on shin.
I’ve done it a couple times in sparring, and guys take about a minute off and walk around and they’re okay, but it least it stops them from kicking you. To break someone’s leg, I’ve never done that before.”
All the devastating power in the kicks of Silva only increased the impact on his leg, making it far more devastating than if the kick was thrown by a mere mortal with normal human kicking power. Add in that Silva’s leg was already damaged from an earlier kick check and you had a recipe for disaster. But none of this should take away from the win of Chris Weidman at all.
The ability to adapt and adjust to different fighters and styles is one of the little things that can be the difference between a good fighter and a great one. Chris Weidman very clearly had no clue how to stop the leg kicks of Silva in their first fight but won is spite of that, and only months later was not only able to stop the low kicks but win the fight in the process with perfect defense. That is something very few fighters are able to do, especially fighting a living legend like The Spider.
One of the big knocks on the credibility of Weidman’s win over Silva in their first fight was that Anderson was just clowning around, but that if he didn’t do that he would have picked apart Weidman like everyone else. Well, there was none of that in the second fight, and Weidman was still winning by a large margin before the leg injury occurred. He almost stopped Silva in the first round after dropping him with a right hand in the standup, and was winning handily on the ground as well. Weidman 
literally did everything exactly right in this bout, and yet some people are saying he really didn’t win the fight. It’s ridiculous.
Look back at their first fight, when Anderson shimmied into a left hook and was knocked out for the first time in his stellar career. Post-fight a large portion of the MMA fanbase immediately discounted the win because it wouldn’t have happened if Silva would have taken him seriously. What we really had was a fighter that realized Anderson’s opponents rarely double up on strikes from the same hand and did exactly that. The sloppy looking right backfist was there to throw the timing of Silva’s head movement off, causing him to circle directly into a perfectly placed left hook. The punch that knocks you out is usually the one you don’t see coming, and Weidman had Anderson’s eyes focused elsewhere at just the right time. It was such a small thing to throw in a combo, and yet the perfect timing of it changed the future of the UFC middleweight division forever.
When you look back on the career of Anderson Silva you have a ballet of violence, pure brutality done in very artistic fashion. Silva was like a throwback to everything we saw in martial arts movies, an untouchable virtuoso of destruction that did what he wanted whenever he felt like it all while making it look easy. UFC fighters had tried and failed to solve the puzzle that is Anderson Silva for seven years. Weidman succeeded where they all failed because he has a mental game that is every bit as good as his impressive set of physical tools. His pre-fight preparation and ability to adjust on the fly in a fight is as good as anyone in the sport and it showed in both of the Silva fights.
Mark Munoz found this out this hard way as well in his loss to Weidman that earned him is shot at the title. Weidman wasn’t just a step ahead of Munoz at all times; he was playing a different game altogether. In the roughly six minutes the fight lasted 
Munoz would credited with landing one strike. That’s it. Weidman then topped it off by feinting with his right hand because Munoz was looking to counter off of it and instantly turning it into one of the nastiest standing elbows in UFC history. Josh Rosenthal should be moving in to stop the follow up ground and pound any moment now.
At this point I don’t think there is a more cerebral fighter in the game than Chris Weidman. He always seems to know his opponent better than they know him, and he knows how to use this to its maximum advantage. His use of subtle movements to manipulate his opponents into doing what he wants them to is vastly underrated. The little things he does are amazing, and they only happen because of his mental focus on every detail.
Chris Weidman can never replace Anderson Silva. No one can. That being said, I can think of no one better to sit atop the MW division in the post-Spider era than a thinking man’s fighter that is great in a very different way than Anderson.
-Josh can be reached at [email protected] or @jhall282.
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