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| Defending Champs Dominate a Stacked UFC Card |
| Written by Josh Gross of Sherdog.com | |||
 Current UFC Middleweight Champion, Anderson “Spider”SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Anderson Silva and Sean Sherk retained their respective UFC middleweight and lightweight titles Saturday in completely opposite yet brutally efficient styles.
In the main event of UFC 73 "Stacked," which the UFC touted as possibly the "best card in the history of combat sports," Silva again showed how quickly he can end a fight by stopping Nathan Marquardt in front of an announced crowd of 14,370 inside the ARCO Arena.Silva, 32-year-old Brazilian southpaw, is now 19-4-0 and gave his challenger an early opening by launching a risky aerial attack. Nate "The Great" defended by corralling one of Silva's long, slender legs and putting the champion down on the canvas, where he worked punches to the body. Silva stayed active, threatening with arm-triangles and a high guard before referee John McCarthy saw fit to put the middleweights back in the standing position with 90 seconds remaining in the first frame of the five-round title clash. Taking a momentary respite from circling away from the Brazilian's power, Marquardt, who could have joined Bas Rutten, Frank Shamrock and Josh Barnett as the only men to own King of Pancrase and UFC titles, ate a left-hand lead to the face that forced him backward. Standing above the 28-year-old Marquardt (25-7-2) for the first time in the fight, Silva landed the first in a series of undefended strikes that caused his challenger to turn away as the period moved into its final seconds. McCarthy paid close attention during the sequence before finally moving in to save the dazed fighter at the 4:50 mark. With the win, Silva will likely take a trip to Cincinnati and face the man he took the belt from last October -- Rich Franklin. The first-round victory marked Silva's sixth quick win in his last seven bouts (including three of four in the octagon), a marked departure from Sherk's effort against No. 1 lightweight designee Hermes Franca. Silva v Marquardt Sherdog.com Anderson Silva, right, faced down challenger Nathan Marquardt at UFC 73 . While Silva has earned a reputation as the UFC's most dangerous champion, Sherk, 33, solidified his status as the organization's most dominant with a unanimous decision victory that saw judges Richard Bertrand and Nelson "Doc" Hamilton score every round in favor of the "Muscle Shark," while Cecil Peoples had it 49-46. The powerhouse 155-pounder from Minneapolis absorbed several hard blows from Franca, but the majority of the 25-minute clash saw Sherk stay tight as he physically overwhelmed the Brazilian, who now lives in Jupiter, Fla. "I wanted to finish him," said Sherk, who used an array of takedowns to thoroughly control position. "My goal was to come out here, run him out of gas, wait for him to make a mistake. Hermes Franca is an excellent Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, man. He didn't really give me a whole lot of openings. He covered his face real well and he can take a hit, you know. He's been finished once in 25 fights. It's not an easy task by any means to finish this guy off." Although the champion cruised to victory, he was close to losing before the final bell. In the opening 30 seconds, Franca locked in a tight guillotine choke that Sherk struggled mightily to escape. He did, and passed Franca's guard in the process, a theme that repeated many times throughout the bout. Franca said Sherk told him after the bout: "'Oh, Hermes, I almost tapped for a second,' It was close. It was really tight." Including the first, Franca hurt Sherk three times to start rounds, though never with the overhand right that was so instrumental in the Brazilian's eight-fight win streak he enjoyed coming into the fight. The second and fourth frames saw the good-natured Franca land brutal knees to the chin when Sherk shot for a takedown, yet the champion's unbelievable conditioning helped him survive and flourish once the fight hit the canvas. "He knows how to stop submissions," said Franca, whose record fell to 18-6-0. "He knows how to ground-and-pound." The only round Sherk could have lost on judge Cecil Peoples' card was the second, when he was hurt by a Franca knee. Outside of that, the champion refused to give Franca, 32, any space to work. The lightweight champ owned the third, picking up the pace and finding his rhythm as Franca appeared to tire. And in the fifth, Sherk's punches finally caused a trickle of blood to drip from the challenger's nose. "My career has been a roller-coaster ride. Lots of highs, lot of lows," said Sherk (32-2-1), whom the UFC announced would defend his belt against B.J. Penn in November. "Winning this title is something I never thought I'd actually do, because I did walk away from the sport for a year, came back, was presented a lot of great opportunities with the UFC. Now I got the world title. So I'm going hang on to this thing and train like a maniac and keep it for as long as I can."
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