I remember when Spider Silva first came over to the UFC. He was paid a lot of money by Dana White, at least a lot in MMA terms. He was a top ten middleweight fighting in Japan, but he was defeated several times and was not considered as good as their middleweight champion Dan Henderson. Still, in the Pride fights I had seen him in, he was explosive. Very offense-minded, great strikes, fantastic Muay Thai.

What's Muay Thai, you ask? It's whacking someone with your elbows and knees. It's kicking someone in the legs. It's wrapping your hands around the back of their neck, pulling them in to you, and kneeing them in the chin. In short, it is better than karate or tae kwon do. It's how they fight professionally in Thailand, where every little boy aspires to become a Muay Thai champion, and they put them in the ring as young teenagers to beat the shit out of each other and hospitalize each other. They don't think of teenagers as children to be protected, as we do in America. They think of teenage boys as possibly providing some money for the family if they are tough enough, and they think of teenage girls as possibly providing some money for the family if they can be sold into prostitution. It's commonplace in Thailand for girls to be sold into slave prostitution, either at the lower end, for three dollars a pop, for the local Thai workers, or at the high end for the tourist trade, and if they try to escape, they are caught by the Thai police force, beaten and raped by the Thai police force, and returned to their whorehouses where the pimps beat them and rape them again, and then send them out, all beaten and destroyed, to fuck more people and not get a penny for it, the money all going to the pimps and as payoffs to the cops.

Muay Thai is a tough damn sport, born in a tough damn country where human rights are nonexistent and teenagers hospitalize each other to applause. It's Spider Silva's specialty. The guy isn't even Thai. He's Brazilian. That means he also learned groundfighting. All Brazilians are taught how to fight like cobras on the ground. They begin in the womb. Muay Thai makes karate and TKD look like crocheting.

I remember Spider Silva's first MMA fight in the UFC. They fed Chris Leben to him. When I heard of that matchup I felt sorry for Chris The Crippler Leben. It was obvious that they didn't just pay Spider Silva all that money to lose his first fight in America. Leben is one hell of a tough sacrificial lamb. Tells you how good Silva is, that Chris Leben is just a meatball to him.

Soon enough, Spider Silva was given the opportunity to Muay Thai poor Rich Franklin's American ass. Spider did a number on him. He put his hands around the back of Franklin's neck and kneed the poor champion on the chin. Franklin was utterly unprepared for a Muay Thai match.

I wasn't completely sold on Spider until after he beat Dan Henderson. To me, Henderson was the rightful middleweight champion of the world, and the Spider Silva fight against Rich Franklin was just an elimination bout to see who got the next title shot at Henderson. Well, Spider beat Henderson. Now he got my attention.

The UFC does have most of the MMA talent in the world, but they also have the best publicity department. Dana White touts his people as the best in the world. His Spider Silva is the best pound for pound fighter in the world. His Brock Lesnar is the future of MMA, to make you forget about fat old Fedor Emelianenko. Yeah, okay Dana, whatever. The fact is, there's only one emperor of MMA, he's a Russian, and Brock Lesnar and Spider Silva together don't add up to him.

Meanwhile, Spider Silva said he's retiring from MMA within a year, and he wants to be a pro boxer instead. I can think of only one reason to do that. Money. Pro boxers make a lot more than pro MMA fighters. At least the top ones do. Top pro boxers get paid nearly as well as basketball and baseball players. MMA stars don't.

There's something weird about Spider Silva ditching MMA for boxing. What makes him think he can be a champion at boxing? You aren't allowed to do Muay Thai or Gracie jiu jitsu in boxing, and those are the things Spider does best. I can see Roy Jones beating the piss out of Spider Silva in a boxing match, even at Roy Jones's age now. I don't see Spider Silva getting out of the first round against Roy Jones Jr. Maybe Spider is just deluded, living the high life and listening to all the people who tell him he's great. He is great, but I think if GSP were his size, GSP would have a good shot at him. I think if B.J. Penn were Spider Silva's size, B.J. Penn would kick the shit out of him. Yeah, I think B.J. is better, pound for pound, than either GSP or Spider. The thing is, I'm not counting a fat B.J. Penn who is fighting way over his fighting weight of 155.

Later:

I have an idea what might be going on here, why Spider is talking retirement. It could be related to the move the UFC just made, eliminating the middleweight division from the WEC and moving all the WEC middleweights into the UFC. The middleweight champion of the WEC is Paolo Filho, best friends with Spider Silva. This puts them in the same weight division. They don't want to fight each other. I wonder if Dana already spoke to Spider about fighting his buddy. It's the obvious match, not this thing with Patrick Cote. Spider Silva should be defending his title against Filho. Maybe this has something to do with why Spider Silva is experimenting with fighting at a higher weight and also pondering retirement.