Anderson Silva has announced plans to retire in 2009, and the reality is that while he may continue through six more fights (as those six fights remain on his UFC contract), there seems to be a coherent rational for his retirement. When I first heard the news, I was shocked, and almost considered calling Anderson Silva out as delusional. After all, a fighter who says “my time is over” while still ranked the #1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and considered to be one of the greatest athletes on the planet, must suffer from some kind of delusion.
The reality, though, is that most media outlets aren’t talking about the whole story, and the casual fan who reads the news on Sherdog may come to believe that Anderson is, as I did upon hearing the statement, absolutely insane. When one watched the full tape of the interview (which is linked in that article, though the translations are incomplete), the logic is lucid and crystal-clear.
There are fighters whose weaknesses are exposed, whose games are picked apart by the architects of the sport, the great minds who find the fighters' kryptonite, but Anderson has not found himself in this situation. A fan who has watched great warriors and realizes that #1 ranked athletes in all sports fall apart as they age, might think that this is the driving theory behind Silva’s logic. That’s not the reasoning, it would seem.
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