Pros react to Anderson Silva’s decision win over Derek Brunson

By Tom Taylor - February 12, 2017

Last night, the UFC touched down in beautiful Brooklyn, New York with UFC 208, an admittedly slow, but undeniably historical night of mixed martial arts.

Anderson Silva Derek Brunson

In the main event of the evening, we saw Dutch kickboxing specialist Germaine De Randamie become the UFC’s first ever women’s featherweight champion with a controversial decision defeat of former women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm. The co-main event, meanwhile, produced an equally controversial result.

In one corner of this co-main event battle, we had former UFC middleweight champion and bona fide MMA legend Anderson Silva. In the other, we had rising contender Derek Brunson, a brick fisted wrestler who sought to rebound from a recent knockout loss.

Having paid dearly for his over aggression in his last fight, this fight saw Brunson take a far more tentative approach than usual. Because Silva opted to pick his shots and wait for counterpunching opportunities, this resulted in a pretty slow fight. It also gave the cage side judges very little to work with. In the end, of course, a victor had to be crowned, and the judges sided unanimously with the legend Silva.

With this result, some members of the MMA community shared their elation with seeing Silva return to the win column. Others vented their frustration, explaining that they believed the decision should have gone to Brunson.

Here are the best pro reactions to Anderson Silva and Derek Brunson’s fight, and Silva’s decision win.

Having defeated Brunson, Silva secures his first win since an October 2012 defeat of Stephan Bonnar. Since then, he was stopped twice by Chris Weidman, and lost decisions to Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier. These losses were punctuated by a decision defeat of Nick Diaz, though this win was overturned when Silva failed a post-fight drug test.

In defeat, Brunson falls onto a two-fight skid, having been knocked out by Robert Whittaker in his last fight.

What did you think of Anderson Silva’s decision defeat of Derek Brunson? Sound off, PENN Nation!

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/12/2017.


Topics:

Anderson Silva Derek Brunson UFC 208