In my opinion there is one person alone to blame for this. That man is Patrick Cote. Going into his fight at UFC 90, Cote knew all about how Anderson Silva's destructive power and amazing clinch had led to the demize of several great fighters including Dan Henderson and Rich Franklin. His vicious knockout power, exemplified in his match against James Irvin showed that Silva is not somebody you want to mess with. So Cote's plan was to go in and do what nobody else could do, his goal was not to win but to survive.
Unfortunately for Cote, his leg got the better of him and all his planning to remain elusive, not engage too aggressively and hope to frustrate Silva into making a mistake was for nought. Cote did not show up for this fight, he did not show up to take the title away from Silva and so he gave Silva no reason to exert more energy than he absolutely had to.
While Cote lost due to injury, there is no doubt that he was always going to lose that fight at the rate that it was going. Silva picked his strikes, outpointed Cote and never looked to be in trouble.
Thales Leites went into UFC 97 with the exact same attitude as Cote. His intention was never to beat Silva, it was to survive against him and as horrible as Cote's offense was, it was a million times better than Leites'. Leites came in confident that he could take Silva to the ground and dominate him with his Jiu-Jitsu but bar one succesful take down, Leites did absolutely nothing, he did not impose his will, he did not come near to a submission and when Silva got back to his feet, he was not going to let Leites put him on the ground again.
Leites was defeated from the second his takedown was stuffed. He had nothing but a ground game and once his ground game was removed, he stood in the Octagon for 20 minutes and tried to survive.
It's easy to blame Anderson Silva for these back-to-back boring debacles but there is more to MMA than highlight reel knockouts. Anderson Silva's responsibility is to defend his championship, not to attack challengers. He is the champion and when somebody comes into a fight with him, they should have the respect to meet him whether it be standing or on the ground. It is not Silva's responsibility to throw caution to the wind because his opponent refuses to have the balls to fight for the belt. No wonder Silva is bored, no wonder he is playing cat-and-mouse games.
The fact of the matter is this; Leites dropped to the floor after every close quarter engagement, he did not try to pull guard, he offered it to Silva and Silva is not stupid. There is no person in this world who can justify why Silva should have welcomed the opportunity to go into a BJJ black belt's guard, its Russian roulette and only inexperienced fighters would have done so.
We all love to see exciting fights but we are spectators and Silva is pound-for-pound one of the best fighters in the world. Sometimes to make his money, he needs to have boring fights, not because he doesn't want to fight but because his opponents don't bring their A game or their A game isn't good enough.
Alternatively, Jorge Gurgel who is an awesome fighter and a great ground tactician, threw away his UFC career for exciting fights. As exciting as Gurgel's fights were, they resulted in 3 losses in 4 matches and a boot out the door. Silva in contrast is a champion with a 10 fight win streak, (12 if you disregard the Okami match) and the last time a match of his went to a decision besides UFC 97 was in 2004.
UFC fans are spoiled, bloodthirsty and at the end of the day, don't care about Silva unless he is winning in spectacular fashion, so why should Anderson Silva risk his health, his title and his legacy for a bunch of jaded morons.
Anderson Silva is one of the greatest and when a fighter gets the privelege to get into a cage with Silva, he should go balls to the wall, not fall on his back every 20 seconds, its disrespectful to Silva and its an insult to all the other fighters who sit on the backburner waiting for their shot at the gold.
If the UFC want Silva in exciting fights, they need to find him opponents who challenge him mentally and physically. Until such a time, Silva will nonchalantly play with his food in order to earn his bread and butter. If people could appreciate the art of his elusiveness, the creativity of his strikes and his ability to adapt his tactics and strategies to complete neutralize his opponents, they would not be booing his efforts. Anybody can land a lucky punch, Matt Serra landed a championship worthy lucky punch; but it takes a real talented fighter to maintain the legacy that Silva has.
