UFC 168 Play-by-Play: Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva

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Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva

Round 1: The crowd chants, “USA,” just before the opening bell.    They touch gloves.  Silva has his hands up.  Weidman throws a front kick to the body.  He closes the distance and secures a single leg takedown.  Silva quickly gets back to his feet and lands a knee to the body.  Weidman presses him against the cage and works to get the fight back to the ground.  They exchange knees to the body.  Silva apples the clinch.  Weidman lands a shot that drops Silva.  He follows Silva to the canvas and lands punches.  Silva covers.  He survives.  Weidman works in Silva’s closed guard.  Weidman lands a right hand.  Weidman lands to the body.  He postures up and delivers a hard elbow followed by two left hands.  Two minutes remain in the round.  Silva applies a body triangle.  Weidman postures up and lands a big left hand.  Silva fires back from the bottom.  Weidman lands a right hand.  Silva lands hammer fists from the bottom.  Weidman lands a big elbow.  Weidman stands.  He leaps in with a right hand at the end of the round.  MMAWeekly scores the round 10-8 for Weidman.

Round 2: Weidman takes the center of the cage.  Silva lands an inside leg kick.  He lands a right hand as Weidman closed the distance.  Weidman inches forward.  Weidman delivers a kick to the body.  Silva answers with a hard inside leg kick. Weidman checks it.  Silva crumbles to the canvas with a leg injury.  Silva broke his leg.  It’s a compound fracture.  Silva is laying on the canvas holding his leg grimacing in pain.  It’s a gruesome scene.  The replay shows that Silva’s leg broke just above the ankle.

The official time of the injury was 1:16 of the second round.

QUOTE

Chris Weidman:
“We knew that in the last fight he hurt me most with the leg kicks so we trained checking them a lot. The goal is to get your knee up and allow them to make contact with their shin right there. As soon as he hit me with that kick and moved backwards I knew right away. There’s no real excitement in a fight finishing like that because you never want to see anyone get hurt like that. I think people haven’t connected with me quite yet because I’m still young in this sport. They don’t realize that I’ve really only been at this a few years and it’s always going to take the fans time to adjust to new faces. Soon people will come to terms with the fact that I’m here to stay. I thought I was close to finishing him in the first round. He hit me with a couple good shots but they didn’t hurt. I could’ve eaten those all day. It didn’t matter what he did tonight. Hands up or hands down I was ready for him.”

SCORECARD

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