Comparisons between Anderson
Silva and Israel
Adesanya have been common in fan middleweight GOAT debates in
recent years.
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Those discussions intensified after Adesanya defeated “The Spider”
via unanimous decision at UFC 234 in February 2019 and then
captured the middleweight belt later that year — this despite Silva
having twice as many title defenses as his counterpart overall. On
Saturday, after Sean
Strickland defeated “The Last Stylebender” to claim the belt in
a massive upset at UFC 293, Silva sent a strong message regarding
the GOAT debate to his 4.9 million Instagram followers.
“I’m the one in charge of this s—t here, and you’re not going to
open your mouth again to compare yourself to me in this s—t,” Silva
wrote in a message that has since been deleted. “Do you understand?
I’m the one in charge of this s—t here.”
Shortly after posting, “The Spider” changed the caption to some
skull and hawk emojis and shared a video from one of his favorite
movies, Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad). In that movie, Captain
Nascimento, who is played by Wagner Moura, famously says: “You’ll
never be the one! Never!” It was the same line Silva said when he
defeated Rich
Franklin for the second time at UFC 77.
Silva left the UFC with several records in the middleweight
division. The Brazilian has the most title defenses in the history
of the division, with 10, all of them consecutively. Silva also has
the longest reign in UFC history, in any category, at 2,457 days.
He still has the most submissions (nine), most knockouts (seven)
and most knockdowns (10) in title fights in UFC history. “The
Spider” also has the most wins (11) in middleweight title fights.
Adesanya has five title defenses and eight title fight wins at
middleweight, being surpassed only by Silva in that category.