The combatants in the main event at UFC 148 shared a stage on Tuesday at the UFC 148 press conference at Lagasse's Stadium in Las Vegas (see video below), and while Anderson Silva was able to keep his cool during the press conference itself, the planned photo ops between the fighters didn't exactly go the way UFC president Dana White would have liked.
White wound up having to get between the UFC Middleweight Champion and his challenger, Chael Sonnen, and the series of posed photos wound up not happening after a press conference where Sonnen was his usual quotable self, while Silva seemed to be letting the words bounce off of him.
"He can say whatever he wants. It's over. On Saturday, a lot of things are going to change. It's going to be much different after Saturday."
Sonnen, for his part, was certainly in a playful mood, reaching into the Muhammad Ali/"Superstar" Billy Graham bag of tricks when he told the crowd at Emeril Lagasse's sports bar, "I don't promote fights, I pick fights. I'm like Jon Jones, I sound like Sean Combs and I've got trombone-sized stones like John Holmes."
Sonnen certainly picked a fight on Tuesday with Silva's manager and translator Ed Soares, asking "Why are you asking questions in English, Anderson sits here like he doesn't understand, Ed Soares interprets, and we have to hear it a second time? First off, he speaks English, and second, we could replace Ed Soares with an app I could download for $9.99. What kind of bizarro world are we in here?"
Soares had a response later on, engaging with Sonnen over his previous claims of speaking Portuguese, but Silva sat and smiled through all of it, including both Sonnen's joking instructions over fielding questions - "Don't answer yet, Anderson, you have to pretend you don't understand" -the part where Sonnen accused the champion of walking around with a "fake belt," a reference to their first encounter at UFC 117 two years ago. Sonnen stunned the MMA world that night by pushing Silva harder than he's ever been pushed before. That certainly came up in Tuesday's press conference, as Silva was asked about Sonnen's success in striking with him during their first encounter and whether he'd be able to duplicate the feat on Saturday night.
"For him to be able to strike with me standing up," Silva said, "he has to be a magician. It's impossible for him to stand up with me."
Sonnen, for his part, claimed that he's an even better fighter than the one who dominated Silva for better than four rounds in August 2010, and that he'll accomplish a similar feat on Saturday night.
"We work on everything," Sonnen said when asked about defending a triangle choke (the hold Silva used to win their first fight). "Everything's got to get better. All I can tell you is that Chael of today could beat up Chael of two years ago, and Chael of two years ago stomped this bum."
Silva, naturally, had his own thoughts on the subject. Asked about his prediction for the fight, Silva said, "The way it's going to go is that I'm going to hit him, I'm going to hit him some more, I'm going to hit him even more, he's going to try to grab onto me, and I'm going to keep hitting him until he gives up. I believe it's going to end in the first round."
When the fighting was done, White had the staging removed to square the fighters off for photo ops, but Silva walked right into his foe, and security had to restrain the fighters to keep them from coming to blows.
Of course, there will be no security, and no restraint needed on Saturday night.
