By Matt Stein: UFC Middleweight champion Anderson Silva (24-4, 14 KOs) put on a defensive clinic on Saturday night defeating his Brazilian challenger Thales Leites (14-2, 2 KOs) by an easy 5-round unanimous decision in Montreal, Canada. The scores were kind of odd with the judges’ scoring it 49-46, 48-47 and 50-46. How Leites could have possibly won even one round is a mystery to me, as Silva dominated every second of the fight and basically toyed with Leites the whole time.
I suppose you could give Leites a few rounds if you felt sorry for him, but if you were actually watching the fight there’s no way he could have anything.
Silva, 34, who is perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world controlled the action in the 1st round. There was little actual punching in the round as both fighters were way of each other and weren’t throwing punches.
However, the little action there was dominated by Silva, who landed a number of good shin kicks. The crowd didn’t like the lack of action and began to boo in the first minute of the round. It didn’t change anything, though, because Silva continued to be way of letting his hands go.
Leites, 27, also from Brazil, scored a knockdown early in the 2nd round. While he had Silva down, Leites landed five good right hands. Silva got up quickly and resumed kicking Leites to both shins with side kicks. Leites made several take down attempts in the round but each time Silva would easily defend them, knocking Leites down each time.
Rather than jump on Leites and turn the bout into a grueling wrestling match, Silva chose to let him get up off his back and continue fighting in the stand up mode.
Leites, an excellent wrestler, seemed to be disappointed about this because he would have had a better chance against Silva if he could have kept the fight on the mat for as long as possible. Silva continued to throw few punches in the round and sticking mostly to the shin kicks. The crowd hated it and booed loudly.
In the 3rd, Leites attempted to take Silva down at least on five occasions and each time Silva would escape, often using his longer arms to push down Leites onto his back. Once he had Leites down, Silva would periodically kick him on the soles or sides of his feet rather than going for the head or midsection.
After a minute, the referee would stop the action and get Leites back on his feet to let the action resume standing up. Silva landed a high number of side shin kicks in the round.
Leites was starting to look a little beat up around the face in the 4th, his left eye swelling from some of the head shots that Silva had landed in the fight. Leites was now pretty much done for the night, and like many wrestler types, had very little energy to continue to fight hard in the stand up. Silva played around with him, toying with him by using different stances and jabbing him playfully as if he were sparring.
Leites only attempted one take down in the round, and, of course, he missed and fell down on his back. Like in the previous rounds, Silva let him up without taking the bait to wrestle with him.
In the 5th rounds, Silva continued landing a lot of side kicks to the legs of Leites, and mixed in some decent right hands. Leites’s nose began to bleed early in the round after taking a good right hand. Desperate to win the fight, Leites attempted a couple of take downs but was easily pushed to the canvas by Silva each time. The rounds, like all the other previous four, were ridiculously one-sided with Silva totally dominating the action.
After the fight, Silva said “Next time I’ll give a better performance.”
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