UFC legends Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo gave their take on the KO on their Pound-4-Pound podcast, and they argue that one person who deserves a ton of blame for what happened is Silva himself. Silva was disqualified after committing multiple fouls to his opponent, Brazilian boxing trailblazer Acelino Freitas, and was later left out cold on the canvas via a punch from Freitas’s son, Rafael.
“When you foul the man repeatedly, continuously, at that point you’re not really in here to fight,” Usman said. “You’re not in here to fight a fair fight. You’re going and throwing strikes and things that are not within the confines of the rules, of course, my team’s going to try to protect me.
“When you create a situation like that, which I do believe that he created, and I love Wanderlei Silva, but he created that situation. Part of what we do as professional fighters is we have to learn how to control that aggression and let it out when it’s necessary, whether it’s outside the ring or inside the ring, you have to learn how to control that. And if you can’t control yourself to where you continue to throw headbutts, and like you mentioned, there was a knee in there at some point, yes, then you’ve got to be prepared for the repercussions that’s going to take place. And you saw what took place.”
“One, he headbutts him, he does it on purpose,” Cejudo added. “There is a knee involved in it, too. A headbutt, competition’s out the window because you could slice somebody. You could hurt somebody. To him, eventually getting disqualified, and then this is what I will say, when everybody’s fighting and everybody’s throwing punches, everything goes. I get it, if that was my dad or my son in a position like that, gloves are off. If you’re not my blood and you’re around me, I’m going to do whatever it takes. To fight, sometimes it’s unfortunate the legend has to be at the shit end of the stick, but he started fighting. He should have just backed away, maybe went to the corner and all of them, but he should have just allowed his team to fight if that was the case.”
Few would argue that Silva broke the rules (multiple times) during his fight with Freitas, which fully justified the disqualification, but the post-fight retribution still left fans and pros shocked. Cejudo and Usman agree “The Axe Murderer” put himself at risk when he chose to physically engage with the people in the ring.
More than anything, Usman is concerned about what this means for Silva’s future. Few were clamoring for Silva to continue fighting as he approaches his 50th birthday next July, and the grisly scene in Sao Paulo only renewed calls for Silva to step away from combat sports competition for good.
“Wanderlei was out cold,” Usman said. “This is what worried me, the way his head hit the canvas as well. I mean, for people that you’re already dealing with some type of head traumas over the years and brain injuries, to take a shot like this, I think it’s—I don’t want to say this for the man, but as far as continuing the fighting career, it’s a tough one. You’ve got to question the fighting career after this.”
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