Gather ‘round, kids, you who are new to this whole MMA thing. Even you who have been following it for the last few years.
There’s a story you should hear, one from before your time. It’s a story about Wanderlei Silva and Quinton Jackson, and it begins a long time ago in a far off land.
To the newer converts out there, it might be hard to understand how these two men were once among the hottest rivalries in the sport. You see them now, as they head into their fourth fight together Saturday night at Bellator 206 in San Jose, Calif., and they seem like just another pair of aging battlers who keep at it out of a lack of better ideas.
Silva is 42, his once ferocious face now smoothed out by age and surgery. Jackson is 40, getting rounder and calmer with every passing year. They can’t quite work themselves up to the same fury they once had when faced with one another, but there was a time when Silva vs. Jackson was an explosive mix of ingredients to be handled with care.
They first met in 2003, in the finals of the PRIDE middleweight grand prix. Earlier that night, Jackson had defeated Chuck Liddell, an emissary from the UFC, in the tournament semifinals. Silva had steamrolled through Olympic gold medalist judoka Hidehiko Yoshida, after knocking out the great Kazushi Sakuraba in the first round of the tournament some three months earlier.
Even before this point, Jackson and Silva had history. According to Jackson, the rivalry was mostly on Silva’s side, and it started when he first asked for a shot at the PRIDE middleweight champ following a victory over Kevin Randleman earlier that year.
“It started with him not liking me,” Jackson told MMAjunkie this week. “Because I’m not afraid of him. I’m not scared of him, and he knows it. It goes all the way back to Japan when I beat Kevin Randleman. I was told, after I beat Kevin Randleman, Wanderlei was next for the belt, and I called him out right after that fight. And he came into the ring, and he pushed me while I was talking on the mic. Kevin Randleman came back, and it was fixing to be a big brawl, and that’s where everything started.”
It’s true that, especially back then, Silva’s constant intensity didn’t leave much room for a sense of humor. Intimidation and overwhelming aggression, that was kind of his whole game in those days.
So when Silva and Jackson both fought their way into the finals on Nov. 9, 2003, the timing felt almost too perfect. Here were maybe the two best 205-pounders in the world at the time, both on long winning streaks, battling it out with the whole grand prix on the line.
As Jackson would later tell The Atlantic, the end of that fight haunted him even years later. He had nightmares about it, remembering how he’d tried to avoid a Silva kick and wound up getting kneed in the face over and over again until the referee finally intervened in the latter half of the 10-minute first round.
And really, Jackson had some reason to feel spurned after that loss. He’d gotten a tougher draw in the semis that same night, for starters. He’d also had an advantageous position in the fight taken away by a referee stand-up, which immediately preceded Silva’s fight-ending barrage.
Still, it was Silva who ended up celebrating the tournament victory as confetti fell from the sky and the glorious PRIDE triumph music blared over the speakers. Jackson toppled to the canvas mid-complaint, still protesting from a sitting position.
Jackson bounced right back after the loss. Silva may have solidified his position as one of the scariest men in the division, as well as one of the top fighters in all of MMA, but Jackson followed a TKO finish of Ikuhisa Minowa with an iconic slam knockout of Ricardo Arona at PRIDE Critical Countdown 2004. When it came time for Silva to defend the belt again that October, Jackson was an obvious pick.
The second fight was different right from the start. As Silva planted his feet to wing his trademark haymakers, Jackson covered up and rolled with the punches before firing back. His defense was tighter. His offense had more snap to it. He hadn’t just gone 13 minutes with Liddell, so he was fresher and more aggressive. Near the end of the first he dropped Silva against the ropes and even seemed to be closing in on a finish when the bell sounded.
One part he still hadn’t figured out, however, was the clinch game. In those moments where Silva managed to control his head in a Thai plum, Jackson still seemed too content to cover up and hope for the best.
After Silva came out for the second round looking completely recovered and refreshed, he stung Jackson with a right hand and then went immediately back to those knees from the clinch. As Jackson staggered forward, one of those knees slipped through and twisted his jaw to one side. Then all Silva had to do was step back and let him fall face-first through the ropes, dangling there like a wet towel.
For a long time that seemed to be it, the period at the end of the sentence. They’d fought twice, Silva won both, and the rivalry was over.
But after the UFC’s parent company bought PRIDE and subsequently shut it down, the two men’s fortunes converged again. Jackson defeated Liddell a second time and became UFC light heavyweight champion, albeit briefly. Silva lost a decision to Liddell in his UFC debut, then bounded back with a knockout of Keith Jardine.
At the end of 2008, more than four years after their last fight, Silva and Jackson were matched up again. This time it wasn’t even close. Silva wasn’t as quick or ferocious or powerful as he once was. Maybe it was time taking its toll, or maybe it was the gruesome knockouts he’d suffered at the hands of fighters like Dan Henderson and Mirko Cro Cop.
Jackson was smarter this time, more tactically sound, and just as lethal as ever in short bursts. He kept his defense tight, stayed patient, and blocked Silva’s looping attack before firing back with a left hook that flattened Silva. And then he added a couple more as Silva was out, until he had to be practically pried off him and shoved away by the referee.
Maybe we were naive to think we could leave it there. The score felt, well, not quite settled, seeing as how Silva was still up 2-1 in the series, but there didn’t seem to be a pressing need for me. Not until they both wound up under the Bellator banner, where everything old becomes new again as part of the search for recognizable names and matchups to promote.
And this one? Sure, it counts. Even 15 years after their first meeting, there’s a glowing ember or two still smoldering in this fire. It’s just not the roaring blaze it once was.
And if you weren’t there for its feverish peak, maybe it’s hard to understand just how much this rivalry seemed to matter once.
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