Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, Anderson “The Spider” Silva quickly ended his rivalry with Chael “The American Gangster” Sonnen in a fight that left no doubts as to why Silva continues to possess the middleweight championship title, during the UFC 148 main event. Leading up to the fight, Silva nor Sonnen’s strategy was a secret. Both had decided to do what they do best. Sonnen’s strategy was to take Silva down and ‘ground and pound.’ Silva’s strategy was to keep standing and ‘duke it out.’ To dominate the opponent was the goal of both opponents. The trick was to be the last one to do it. During the first round, Sonnen took Silva to the mat for most of the 5 minute round, and as the round ended, Sonnen was in full mount.

Once again, he seemed to control Silva into frustration as in their first meeting, but even then Sonnen never landed any lethal blows to upset the Champ. Sonnen the rushed the Champ as the second bell sounded, pinned the Champ against the cage and tryed to find another takedown. Sonnen threw a few knees as Silva resisted the takedown, when something in Chael’s brain told him that this would be an excellent time to try a spinning back fist. The spinning back fist was ill-timed, ill-conceived and ill-executed. The latter, cost him. With that, Silva pounced on Sonnen and landed a text-book knee (100% legal) to Sonnen’s sternum, and continued with the ‘ground and pound’ that Sonnen had only dreamed of using on Silva, when UFC ref Yves Lavigne, stopped the fight, declaring a TKO. Silva is now 15-0 in the UFC, and has successfully defended his middleweight championship title for the 10th consecutive time. Silva, ever-gracious even after all of the disrespectful things that Chael Sonnen had said regarding himself and his native Brazil had this to say: “Chael disrespected my country, but it’s fine. Yeah, I have big emotions… but let’s show that Brazil has manners. I want everyone to applaud Chael.” And that’s just what the audience did.