Big Fight Breakdown: Silva vs. Marquardt

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By Jason Probst

When Anderson Silva defends his UFC middleweight title July 7 against Nate Marquardt, the success or failure to retain his 185-pound belt likely hinges on how much excitement he can generate. That’s because Marquardt is one of the game’s eminent shutdown artists, capable on suffocating you on the ground and taking away your strengths with a well-honed mix of skills.

The “styles make fights” adage couldn’t be more applicable here, as these two employ dramatically different tactics. If they were football teams, Silva would be a wide-open, run-and-gun offense looking to throw the long bomb whenever possible. Marquardt would be your classic ball-control, high-percentage outfit that wears opponents down, with nary an unconventional call.

For while on the surface this may seem a simple collision between two fighters, lurking beneath are multiple subplots that could play a role in determining the outcome, given how each fighter reacts and responds to the other guy’s moves.

Here’s the Big Fight Breakdown on Saturday’s championship match:

Walking the line when striking
Two of the toughest challenges in a fight are obtaining stand-up respect from a guy that’s a better striker, and timing attacks correctly against a grappler bent on taking you to the ground. Marquardt’s challenge is the first one, Silva’s the second.

That where “walking the line” comes in – the nuanced process of doing enough striking in spots, then getting back to a secure range before being countered. Do too little, and you find yourself blasted silly or taken down. Do too much and the same problems materialize. But a fighter who can do just enough standup to be effective while not providing openings the other guy can capitalize is on the path to victory.

A great example of this is Randy Couture’s masterful first-fight performance against Chuck Liddell. Couture picked his spots masterfully against “The Iceman,” shooting in stiff jabs and a quick combination or two while disrupting Liddell’s timing. This opened up clinches and takedowns as Liddell realized he couldn’t just sit back and bomb away. But a wrestler-grinder type can easily go too far in trying to implement his nascent standup proficiency, as we saw in Matt Hughes-Georges St-Pierre II.

A fighter can get an inflated confidence when he feels his standup is improving. Let’s face it – anything you spend hundreds of hours working on in the gym, you’re going to want to show it come fight time.

Looking like a cross between Bruce Lee and Peter Parker, St-Pierre happily obliged Hughes’ willingness to wage a kickboxing-type match, like a three-card monte hustler welcoming a tourist into the swindler’s den.
And yet Matt Serra – never previously known for his standup – took St-Pierre out on the feet in the Canadian‘s next fight. In this sport, you never know what’s gonna happen until it happens (and sometimes, in the case of Gabriel Gonzaga stopping Mirko “Cro Cop” with a kick to the head, you still can’t believe it).

That’s the paradox Marquardt faces. He’s a strong 185-pounder with decent strikes, and surely he knows he could catch a hot one and ruffle Silva‘s characteristic cool. But he’s got to play the openings given him with judiciousness and high-wire timing. One mistake could change the fight dramatically. Or end it.

That’s because Silva may be the most dangerous striker around, at least in terms of how many ways he can punch your ticket. There are more destructive one-shot bangers at the top of the striker echelon, but the sheer diversity of how the Brazilian goes after people is a numbing equation to deal with. He strings together classic boxing combinations with his lands, unleashes snapping kicks, accurate knees, and can do plenty of unconventional things that are virtually impossible to prepare for until you’ve dealt with it up close, and then it’s often too late.

A great example of this is his bout against Tony Fryklund last year. Silva threw a right hand that missed, then whipped his elbow back through Fryklund’s raised gloves, knocking him out with a vicious shot. It was as though he invented the move on the spot. But really, it’s testimony to how well-steeped he is in Muay Thai boxing, which employs all sorts of nasty tactics like that.

Silva’s aggression has to be properly doled out, though. For in the early portions of the fight, stand-up wise, Marquardt is taking a .38 in against a shotgun, but the champion has to be careful in not leaving a limb hanging or missing and being open to a clinch or takedown attempt. Marquardt is exceptionally skilled at closing the gap on foes, where he’ll grab you and muscle you around, working in a tie-up and often getting a takedown off an effective body lock. That’s why both have to operate in very specific margins, mitigating the payoffs of landing something big while not getting caught.

Punish before attempting submissions
This one applies to both, as each is an outstanding submission artist adept at escaping from foes’ attempts to tap them out with a slam-bang finishing hold. Anybody who’s trained submission grappling will tell you it’s a lot easier to get out of a hold than to successfully apply one, even when you’re in dire straits getting punched in the face.

Witness Silva’s precise timing escaping an armbar attempt from Travis Lutter, after Lutter bounced a string of blows off his dome and then transitioned to the submission, but missed it. Lutter went from being on the verge of a big upset to finding himself stuck back at square one.

The vexing thing about submissions such as arm bars, triangles, and leg locks is that they’re a purely binary outcome – you either finish the fight or can’t get the tap, usually giving the other guy a chance to improve his position. And it’s still unclear how much credit judges give for a “near” submission, as it’s impossible know how close a guy is to tapping in most cases.

That’s why submissions are a bad risk-return, unless it’s something like an arm-triangle or guillotine choke, which simultaneously runs the other guy out of gas while keeping you in a good position even if he can escape it. Going for a leg lock, armbar or triangle can have disastrous consequences if you can’t finish, and often ends up with a reversal or getting punched in the face.

You can waste a lot of gas exerting yourself to get a sub. And while conventional wisdom holds that it’s best to go for submissions early in MMA before both guys get slippery with sweat, it’s also a helluva lot harder to lock one down if a guy isn’t softened up, unless he blunders into something as a result of a rank, amateur-style mistake.

Neither Silva nor Marquardt are likely to do this, given their excellent grappling credentials.

If there’s a perfect example of two different approaches on how to decide when to strike vs. submit, look at how differently Rich Franklin and Evan Tanner fought wily David Loiseau, who is notorious for getting out of chokes and bad spots, then punishing opponents. Tanner was able to handily get Loiseau’s back on several occasions, yet couldn’t finish his rear naked choke attempts, getting punished and stopped on cuts after Loiseau escaped and hammered him. Franklin, meanwhile, simply exploited superior positions and ground Loiseau down to the point where he couldn’t get off because he’d taken a terrible beating.

Tito Ortiz is masterful at this – after pounding on Ken Shamrock for three rounds of their first fight, Ortiz probably could’ve shoved his head in Shamrock’s armpit and survived the ensuing choke because Ken had taken such a beating.

Both guys can take a cue from that. Silva figures to have a big advantage on the feet, but if it’s on the ground and he’s on top, any openings that allow him to land big shots merely should precede more punishment unless something obvious is laying there, begging to be yanked en route to a submission.

Marquardt is physically stronger, and if he finds himself on top of Silva, he should grind the champion down with shots to the body and head, especially if he’s able to obtain side control or mount. If he goes for a submission he could give up a big positional advantage the way Lutter did, which preceded his downfall via triangle choke.

Size Matters
While Silva’s arrival into the UFC heralded an exciting new face in the 185-pound division, he is a former 170-pounder, while Marquardt is the naturally bigger middleweight. Silva’s mat prowess is well-established, as he is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but Marquardt should have an edge on the mat in pure technical ability. It may not be much, but grappling skill is like a racehorse’s pedigree.

The difference between two guys like this might be largely obscured for many fans, but it’s analogous between two receiver prospects at the NFL combine that run the 40 yard dash. One guy runs a 4.3, the other a 4.5. That small difference might add up to something significant, or be a non-factor in how they stack up when compared during game time. But the better rating certainly doesn’t hurt, and can manifest itself in important ways.

Marquardt has competed at the highest levels of the submission grappling circuit. Silva is wily and excellent at escaping from bad positions, with the know-how to finish guys who make mistakes on the ground, but Marquardt is exceptionally technical and almost always has a counter for every move you make on the mat.

The longer the fight goes on the ground, the better the challenger’s chances get, as his size and strength could wear down Silva. An easily overlooked thing many good grapplers do is exert pressure on foes while they’re in top position – a guy like Matt Hughes may be only a welterweight, but with your back on the floor he’ll feel like somebody dropped a piano on your chest. There’s also the axiom that everybody is, at best, a blue belt when you can get punched in the face, which means Silva could render that size advantage useless with one good shot.

The Excitement Factor
As HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant says, “Win this fight, and be exciting the next time.” That’s pretty much the strategy for Marquardt barring a freak outcome or pinpoint bomb on the feet. He has five rounds to win, and it might behoove him to give away one or two while figuring Silva out and get attenuated to the Brazilian’s rhythm. Silva is excellent at luring opponents into mistakes, and punishing them, especially if they come out too aggressive.

Marquardt can win a slow, grinding type of fight due to his excellent conditioning and a knack for winning intense grappling battles – witness the technically dizzying exchange of positions and countermoves he executed on Joe Doerksen, Ivan Salaverry and Dean Lister – but he has to take the play away from Silva at some point. So far, the champion has shown he is the best 185-pound fighter in the UFC with a brand of explosive ability and technical depth that few can match. For Marquardt to win, he has fight his fight, even if it means a slower pace than the typical Silva bout.

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