James Brydon

Follow fight-by-fight results for MMA events with Twitter. James will do live updates during all UFC events as well as many other promotions, including Canadian ones.

Anderson Silva pulled out a miracle submission of Chael Sonnen.

What we witnessed Saturday night in the main event of UFC 117 was not a rally or a return to form for middleweight champion Anderson Silva. It was a magic act. A Houdini. A rabbit out of a hat so beaten down it was practically flat. (The hat, that is, not the poor rabbit.)

The Spider’s stunning submission of Chael Sonnen simply left me speechless. I'm still having trouble believing Silva is still the champion. A minute into the final frame of a completely one-sided contest, I was already thinking of Mr. Sonnen as the new holder of the UFC's middleweight belt. He was a man who was able to talk the talk and walk the walk. Silva's "15 minutes of fame" looked over, Sonnen's about to begin.

Unfortunately the challenger needed 25 minutes to be immortalized. And he came up a minute, 50 seconds short.

But that's one of the things that makes mixed martial arts so captivating. You can never get confident of a result before it's over, not as a fan and certainly not as a fighter. Things can ultimately change in a split second.

That isn’t the case in most sports. If you’re down 4-0 in a hockey game with two minutes to play, there’s no way to score five goals on one shot. You can hit a grand slam in baseball, but you have to load the bases first. You need to put together a rally and sustain it before you can talk comeback.

Not so in MMA. The "grand slam" can come out of nowhere, which always keeps you on your toes.

Speaking of which, that’s probably what Sonnen should have done in that fateful final round: keep the fight on his toes.

Staying standing with Silva would seem to go against Sonnen’s style and his strengths. But the irony is, what Silva did in his last fight and got lambasted for is exactly what Sonnen should have done: dance around the Octagon for five minutes with the fight already won.

But the months of trash talk from Sonnen criticizing Silva for exactly that type of behaviour eliminated the possibility of entertaining such a closing strategy, lest he be a hypocrite. If he hadn’t been so outspoken on it, maybe he could have done it himself without losing face.

How’s that for tragic irony?

Sonnen offered no excuses for the loss and was brutally honest after the fight.

"I came in second. They gave me my opportunity and I came up short."

While true, what I was thinking was:

"Anderson Silva gave you a golden opportunity and you blew it."

I'm not going to get into the technical details of what mistake he made and what he should have done while he was in Silva’s guard desperately trying to hold on, because a great fighter like Silva might very well have been able to find a way to submit you no matter what you do.

But I do wonder this: if Sonnen was able to avoid the submission from the same position for four rounds, how did he allow it in the final one, especially when he now had no reason not to be overly cautious. He didn’t need to produce any offence or take any chances at that point.

In the post-fight press conference, Sonnen said he couldn’t just lie there; he needed to keep working or else the referee would have stood them up. Okay, but would that have been such a bad thing? If his submission defence is the weakest part of his game, he’s likely safest back on the feet.

And you can’t be criticized if it’s the referee that puts you back in that position.

All in all, it’s a loss that’s really going to sting Sonnen for a long time and perhaps forever if he doesn’t get another chance and capitalize next time. What’s worse is it’s a common theme for the two-time Greco-Roman wrestling National champion.

Sonnen wrestled for a world championship in 2001 but had to settle for silver. He fought Silva's old buddy Paulo Filho for the WEC belt in 2007 but was submitted. He got another shot at Filho a year later and won every round in what should have been a fight for the title, but because Filho missed weight it was only a three-rounder.

He’s so close to being a two-time Zuffa middleweight champ. But no cigar.

As for the champion, I have to say I’m impressed. Silva was getting beat up and utterly dominated, but he never succumbed to the ridiculous amounts of strikes -- I say ridiculous because Sonnen hit him significantly more times than Silva had been hit in his previous 11 UFC fights combined -- and he never gave up on trying to win the fight.

Having said that, I believe the Brazilian’s performance might actually knock him down some pound-for-pound lists. Anyone who had him above Georges St-Pierre should consider dropping him below after that -- Silva was manhandled and GSP isn't getting caught like Sonnen was.

But whoever thought Silva might have lost an edge after his previous few fights obviously has to think again. He attacked when he could and defended well and while he got himself into real trouble -- I mean, real trouble -- when it counted, he rose to the occasion and that’s what champions do.

Just don’t call it a comeback.