Wanderlei Silva ready to rock in 2004

[lightweight]

Courtesy of tatame

After an amazing 2003, sealed with the Pride Grand Prix victory, Wanderlei Silva is ready for the 2004`s challenges. Fully recover from the arm surgery, Wanderlei has been training and getting weight. The Pride�s champion is now weighting 99kg, and he wonders to switch categories. 'Everything will depends of Pride�s proposal. The way I feel now, I can reach the 105kg or 93kg. However there are lots of people in my category I need to face," commented Wanderlei, showing no interesting to a particular adversary.

While trains in Curitiba, Wanderlei keeps an eye open to Las Vegas. On January 31st V�tor Belfort will dispute the Light Heavyweight belt with the actual champion Randy Couture at UFC. 'Its gonna be a a terrific fight. Randy comes from great victories, but V�tor is also getting well prepared', evaluated the Brazilian fighter. Wanderlei might be at UFC's audience if he doesn't reach a deal with Pride until February. A long time ago, Ultimate keeps in mid the idea of confront the UFC Light Heavyweight's champion with Pride's Middleweight champion Wanderlei Silva. The idea pleasures the Brazilian champion. 'That bout would be amazing. I am sure my fans would love it'.

[Purity]

Re: Wanderlei Silva ready to rock in 2004

Originally posted by lightweight
'That bout would be amazing. I am sure my fans would love it'.

not if it turns out like the last one...

[VulgarTheClown]

he is gainin weight to duck rampage!

[lightweight]

Originally posted by VulgarTheClown
he is gainin weight to duck rampage!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Worst ducking strategy EVER!!

Ducking a guy he beat the piss out of by moving up to fight heavyweights...

[realkaps]

He is going too get creamed in the HW and I'm gonna love every minute of it. Lightweight, I'd just like to let you know its your fault I hate him again.....

[catchwrestler]

yeah right scared of a guy he already owned once....convincingly!

[realkaps]

Ref standing them up early? Yeah......

[lightweight]

I don't want to argue about the standup, but I'm going to give my point of view.

This was the finals in the biggest tournament ever, and I'm sure they wanted a finish to cap it off. Rampage was fairly active but he didn't try to improve position, neither did Silva, neither of them were making a determined effort for a finish. No way it would have finished at that pace in that fashion, so they restarted it standing, to me, no big deal. If positions were reversed I'm sure it would have been stood up then too, again, no big deal. I like to see finishes more then gnp decisions.

Also, Rampage just finished outstriking the man that a good number of people felt would ko Silva(nevermind people already figuring Rampage would ko Silva before this display), so he "should" have beaten Silva standing. It's not like Rampage was forced to fight with a hand tied behind his back, Rampage had an equal chance to beat Silva into the ground. Silva was simply better standing that night and finished the fight.

[realkaps]

You have seen just as many Rampage fights as I have, and 80% of the time when he is on top, on the ground, he finishes the fight shortly thereafter. Rampage doesnt hold out for the GnP decision, he finishes fight......

[lightweight]

True, but of his recent finishes they are standing(Randleman, Grey, Ishikawa) slams(Satake, Otsuka), and considerable damage standing leading to the finish vs Liddell, and the decision over Busta. So I don't think the stand up should be labeled as such a foul against Rampage, he can obviously fight on his feet.

And, of the finishes he has on the ground many were from side mount, or mount. He had sidemount given to him for a few seconds in the fight and lost it. After that he didnt make one attempt to pass guard, odds are very strong he wouldn't finish the fight from guard vs Silva. I personally don't see fault in why they stood it up, or understand why making Rampage fight standing vs Silva seems to have been labeled unfair.