Anderson Silva Must Move Up to 205, and Other Observations From UFC 90

Overall, I found UFC 90 to be a fairly average event, save for the main bout between Anderson Silva and Patrick Cote which was a bit of a circus. Silva's goofing off and dancing went overboard pretty early, and Cote's freak injury certainly didn't help matters. With decisive finishes over Dan Henderson and Rich Franklin (2X), the UFC simply has zero middleweights that can compete with Silva. Yushin Okami might be an exception but I don't think that would be a very fun fight to watch.

Therefore, unless the UFC wants to spend big bucks on new talent, we can all agree it's time for Anderson to move up to the highly competitive light heavyweight division. The guy's bored - it's no wonder he's talking about retirement! There has been a lot of talk about a match with Chuck Liddell, but I don't think that's such a great idea because Chuck doesn't need any more losses at this point in the career.

The only problem is that most of the UFC's top light heavyweights are booked up for the next few months - Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans, Thiago Silva, Lyoto Machida, Rampage Jackson, Wanderlei Silva, and Shogun Rua already have fights set up. Maybe Keith Jardine or Luiz Cane are willing to step in? They could add the match to the UFC 93 card featuring the Franklin/Henderson and Coleman/Shogun fights. Another option is to keep Silva on standby until a match can be scheduled, ready to step in for any light heavyweight that gets injured.

Okay, enough spider talk, let's move on.

I am officially convinced that Thiago Alves is the real deal. He didn't look so hot against Karo Parisyan, and I wasn't terribly impressed with his win over Matt Hughes, given that Hughes is a bit slower these days.

However, Thiago's takedown defense against Josh Koscheck was fantastic and his striking was pretty nasty. I thought there were times that Thiago could have been a bit more aggressive, but he won a very decisive victory over a top five welterweight in Josh Koscheck, and he can't be denied a title shot now.

It's just too bad that in all likelihood, we won't see Thiago fight again until next April at the earliest. He deserves the winner of BJ Penn/Georges St. Pierre 2, and with that fight scheduled for January, the winner won't be ready to fight again for a few months. I do hope the UFC pushed Alves as a star. He is very charismatic, has a great look, and has a crowd-pleasing fighting style. He needs some marketing muscle behind him.

We also have to give Josh Koscheck some credit here. He has a pretty damn impressive chin and he recovered from some pretty hard strikes. However, the fans still hate him and that won't change any time soon. Maybe he should shave his head?

The big loser of the night had to be Fabricio Werdum, who was viciously knocked out by UFC newcomer Junior Dos Santos. Prior to this, Werdum was largely considered to be a top heavyweight, but this loss knocks him down the ladder a bit.

Elsewhere on the card, I took special notice of Thales Leites' successful rear-naked choke on Drew McFredries. Thales used the BJ Penn technique where a leg is used to restrain one of the victim's arms, leaving only one arm to defend the choke. BJ successfully used this technique on Jens Pulver and Joe Stevenson. Now why the hell don't more guys use this technique?