Behind the Madness: Anderson’s Retirement and Reasoning

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 off of 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, crystal.

There are fighters who’s weaknesses are exposed, who’s games are picked apart by the architects of the sport, the great minds who find the fighter’s kryptonite, but Anderson has not found himself in this situation. A fan who has watched great warriors, #1 ranked fighters 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.

Anderson doesn’t care about money, he doesn’t care about over extending himself and collapsing, he cares, genuinely (it would seem), about the future of the sport, and his goal, in the Gospel according the Anderson, is to make room for the fighters of the future. Anderson, now 33, seems to consider the future of the warrior in his decision to leave the sport, so that he could allow other fighters to rise to dominance, and focus his time on honing the young up-and-comers.

My first thought, in all honesty, was to write a piece that would incite outrage in the MMA community, that would allow for an uprising of fans and supporters of this great warrior to speak out and tell him that we are great fans, but, as the Beatles say, it’s worth our while to let him be. The peripheral effects, beyond giving Anderson a chance to share his knowledge with the world, are significant.

We may come to believe, ten years down the line, that we have never seen a fighter like Anderson Silva since he left. This is a delusion. What Anderson is doing is perpetuating the level of evolution by creating competition in what is (and may very well remain, until 2009) his dominion. He is giving great fighters a goal that they can aspire to. That is not to say that there would not be challengers to his title if he were to remain, but the reality is that we will not recognize the challengers as legitimate, nor their chances as substantial.

If Anderson should choose to stay, that is his decision, but that’s really the point. This is not the position of the MMA community, as it may be argued. There are consequences to his staying, both positive and negative, and there are rewards to his leaving, though we loose one of the most impressive and profound talents we have seen in the brief history of this sport. Someday, though, when hindsight is twenty-twenty, we should evaluate the validity of the decision. Not today.