In the always fertile imaginations of fight fans (including this one), it was easy to picture the recent sparring sessions between former friendly rivals Rich Franklin and Anderson Silva being similar to the final scene in Rocky III, when Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed meet in the gym for a third fight away from the outside world.
Unfortunately for us, it didn’t quite work out that way.
“We did get to spar a bit, but nothing like that,” laughed Franklin, who worked with Silva in Los Angeles to prepare for his UFC 99 main event bout against Wanderlei Silva. “When we did spar, it was just going back and forth with the two Silvas – himself and the Wanderlei version.”
If you’ve seen the outtake video from Silva’s upcoming instructional DVD, you know that the UFC middleweight champ has an uncanny ability to mimic other fighters’ styles in the gym. This talent allowed Franklin to get an early look at the man he’ll be facing this Saturday and begin formulating a game plan for a fighter he says reminds him “of a blender. Once his arms start moving, bad things happen.”
“He (Anderson) does a phenomenal Wanderlei impersonation,” said Franklin. “He mimics him so well that I almost thought I was standing in front of Wanderlei for a moment.”
But can “The Spider” pull off a Rich Franklin impersonation?
“Apparently he did a Rich Franklin impersonation and Rob Radford, my boxing coach, said that it was dead on,” he said. “I would have liked to have seen it.”
There will be enough time for that after June 13th. Now, it’s time for business, and Franklin made sure he covered all the bases in preparation for Silva. That included what some consider an odd decision to go out west for some training with Anderson Silva, a man who beat him in title fights in 2006 and 2007.
“For the most part I guess it is kind of a shock for people, but they think that it’s a good idea,” said Franklin. “My logic is that Anderson and I both had a tremendous amount of respect for each other before we fought, and definitely after we fought both times. It’s obvious that we’re not gonna fight again before my career is over – the UFC is not interested in putting that fight together - so (Silva’s manager) Ed Soares had contacted me and asked me about going out there to train with them. We had talked before about me coming out and training in LA together, but unfortunately our scheduling has been problematic. This time, when Ed offered for me to go out there and train, I said let me check with my coaches. So I called Neal (Rowe), I called Rob (Radford), I called Matt (Hume), and they said ‘why wouldn’t you?’ And aside from the scheduling, when we were actually training, I really liked the way that Anderson had set up the classes and the kind of drills he was doing. He runs a very organized practice. So it was great training, and I got to work with him on an individual basis a bit.”
He undoubtedly got to pick Silva’s brain about his former Chute Boxe teammate as well, but when fighting someone like “The Axe Murderer”, preparation can only go so far. Eventually, you have to fight and face someone who can turn a sporting event into a fight before you have time to react.
“Wanderlei is definitely explosive, and he goes from 0 to 100 in milliseconds,” said Franklin. “Because of that it makes him very dangerous as a fighter, and it’s one of those things where if all of a sudden for one instance you decide to relax and you do it at the wrong time, it could be very costly for you.”
And even though the former UFC middleweight champ has 31 pro fights under his belt, ask him if he’s ever faced someone with the style of Silva, and he’s stumped.
“Nobody really comes to mind,” said Franklin, who admits that he prefers fighting a foe who is more measured in his attack when the bell rings.
“Somebody that is going to come at you the way Wanderlei does is going to be a tough fight,” he said. “I prefer to fight a guy who’s a little more tactical because it gives me the ability to time and set up my game and do what I want to do as well. But on the flip side of that, Anderson is a very tactical fighter, and that didn’t seem to go very well for me.”
This honesty has served Franklin well throughout his nine year pro career. He won’t go through his career with rose-colored glasses, believing that he’s got it all figured out just because he’s made it to the top of the fight world. That means he’s constantly tinkering with his training methods, constantly analyzing what he can do to become a better fighter. Subsequently, his well-deserved reputation as a thinking man’s fighter has made him the perfect ambassador for the sport, a role he takes seriously, especially as the UFC heads into Germany for the first time. But it hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride when it comes to educating the Germans about MMA and the UFC.
“As far as that goes, I’ve kinda been in that role here in the States,” said Franklin, the former high school math teacher who owns a bachelors degree in Mathematics and a masters degree in education. “The UFC has put me on the Bill O’Reilly and Donny Deutsch show, and all that kinda stuff, and I’m an educated fighter, so for me to speak publically about the sport’s safety record, the standardized rules, and the way they take care of the athletes in the UFC, I have no problem with that. I was a little surprised when we got over there (Germany) because I knew the sport was new in Europe, but I was just not expecting the kind of questioning we got. It was the same kind of questioning you would have received in the States 10 or 12 years ago, using phrases like ‘human cockfighting’ and just not understanding the rules. It was as if the journalists over there hadn’t done the research on the sport prior. I would think that at this point, even if you’re going to place like Germany, where it’s new, at some point in time, you had to have at least seen this on television and thought ‘what is this?’ even if you’re not interested in it. But then when you find out that it’s coming to your country, I’d say ‘I’m going to this press conference, I want to know a little bit about this, so I’m going to do my research ahead of time.’ And it just wasn’t that way. We did a late night show over there, their version of Jay Leno, and you could tell that the host was a bit scared to death, people in the audience looked at us like we had two heads, and it was crazy.”
Franklin says that he’s enjoyed the education process though, and in just a few days, people will get to judge for themselves when two of the finest fighters of this era collide in a bout that promises to be one of the best of the year. And when all is said and done, Franklin and Silva will have to see where their careers are following the final bell. For Silva, his next bout will be at 185 pounds, while Franklin will put 10 pounds back on from Saturday’s catchweight of 195 pounds to campaign with the light heavyweights, a division he returned to last September, and where he’s re-acclimated his body following his long stint at middleweight.
“Since I’ve made the move from 185 up to 205, I’ve put on a few pounds, not a ton,” he said. So for me to make 195 will still be an easy thing and it won’t undo all the work that I’ve done to be at 205. I don’t see this drop in weight to be much of a problem as far as moving up and down and all of that stuff.”
It’s a good place for Franklin to be in, especially if he wins this weekend, because the new man on top of the division – Lyoto Machida – is someone the Cincinnati native has a little history with. In 2003, a then-unknown Machida handed Franklin his first pro loss. Since then, the Brazilian has gone on a seemingly unstoppable tear.
“I’m not really surprised by Machida,” he said. “I fought Machida back at the end of ’03, and to be honest, at the time, he was the sleeper. We didn’t know who he was. He was a lot better than I thought then, and to see what’s going on with him doesn’t really surprise me.”
If the two keep winning, a rematch is an intriguing one, both fighting-wise and marketing-wise. But Franklin is a wise man, and as such, he’s not going to speculate about anything not including the name Wanderlei Silva.
“Quite frankly, I have a tough fight in front of me right now, and that’s the one I’ve got to worry about,” he said. “I’ll look to the future after Silva.”
That’s fine, because this Saturday’s bout is one of those ‘dream fights’ that wasn’t possible back when Silva fought exclusively in Japan’s PRIDE organization, and now that it’s happening, we should savor every second of it. You know Franklin is.
“I never really pictured any of these matchups ever happening,” said Franklin, who is coming off a fight with another former PRIDE star, Dan Henderson. “Now here I am in the face of these things, fighting guys like Dan and Wanderlei Silva, and I do know that this is one of the fights that the fans are like ‘wow, this is an awesome fight.’”
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