5 Brutal UFC squash matches

#2 Anderson Silva vs. Rich Franklin – UFC 64: Unstoppable – 10/14/06

This remains one of Silva’s nastiest finishes ever

In October 2006, Rich Franklin was widely recognised not only as the best 185lbs fighter in the world and the UFC champion but also as one of the pound-for-pound best fighters on the planet too.

He’d been utterly dominant in every one of his UFC fights to this point, crushing Evan Tanner for the title in June 2005, and his most recent appearance had been a one-sided beatdown of top contender David Loiseau. Franklin had picked up a couple of injuries in that fight – a broken hand and a broken ankle – but was apparently healthy coming into this, his third title defence.

Anderson Silva meanwhile, for all his clear talents, had only one UFC fight, his now-legendary knockout of Chris Leben.

Despite looking ultra impressive against Leben, most analysts recognised that Leben was a limited fighter and while Silva had surprised people by knocking him out – breaking Leben’s iron chin – he was only a few fights removed from a loss to Ryo Chonan, who by this stage had been exposed as not quite the top fighter Japanese fans thought he was.

I remember watching this one at the time and wondering whether something was wrong with Franklin upon his entrance. He was sporting a black eye, but that didn’t tend to matter as everyone knew Rich trained hard. It was more his demeanour – against Loiseau, he’d come out looking pumped, shadow-boxing and snarling, while against Silva he seemed almost shrunken away like he was deep in thought.

After Bruce Buffer’s announcements and a touch of gloves, Silva made the sign of the cross; Franklin responded with a brief prayer as if Silva was in his head and he was begging God to be on his side, not the Brazilian’s. If that were the case, then God certainly wasn’t listening to Rich Franklin.

After a brief feeling-out process, Silva grabbed a plum clinch, and that’s where the massacre began. He landed a couple of knees to the body and when Franklin attempted to break the clinch, Silva overpowered him violently, practically throwing him into the fence from the plum.

Nobody had done that to Franklin before as he’d always been the bigger, stronger fighter at 185lbs. More knees to the body followed before one landed to the head, staggering Franklin. Silva closed in and grabbed the plum again and we got a horrifying visual – Franklin staring into Silva’s eyes as if pleading for him to stop.

Anderson didn’t stop, instead, he landed more knees; one shattered the champion’s nose and the other put him down and out. It was an execution.

This was one of the greatest squashes in UFC history as it was such a shock – going in Silva was seen as a tough test for Franklin but wasn’t expected to win, not least in such devastating fashion.

This was, of course, the beginning of Silva’s run of domination in the UFC – he defended the Middleweight title a further ten times – and while Franklin had further success in the UFC, he never reached the heights that he did before this fight. This remains Franklin’s most violent defeat and one of Silva’s nastiest finishes.