#4 Krazy Horse vs. Wanderlei Silva
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From one unsubstantiated confrontation/fight to another, we go to PRIDE in 2004 for a supposed brawl between the notorious Charles ‘Krazy Horse’ Bennett – like Lee Murray, no stranger to legal issues – and then-PRIDE champion Wanderlei Silva, some 50lbs heavier than Bennett.
Bennett had been brought into PRIDE to fight Takanori Gomi during his run as the Lightweight kingpin, largely on the strength of some entertaining fights in King of the Cage rather than his skills. The hope was that he might end up becoming a cult star in Japan in a fashion similar to Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson.
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Bennett lost to Gomi, naturally, but he was brought back by PRIDE for a fight on New Year’s Eve 2004 against Japanese fighter Ken Kaneko. After beating Kaneko via armbar, Bennett was reportedly involved in a confrontation backstage with Brazil’s Chute Boxe team – not the type of guys to mess with.
Chute Boxe at the time were arguably the best team in Brazilian MMA, housing bad dudes like Wanderlei, Murilo ‘Ninja’ Rua, his brother Shogun, Assuerio Silva, Anderson Silva, and others. Their reputation was fearsome, with their sparring sessions apparently being as brutal as a lot of official MMA fights.
Not that it mattered to Krazy Horse.
What we do know – as it’s on tape and is linked at the top of this page – is that Bennett got into a brawl with Chute Boxe’s Cristiano Marcello, and the future UFC fighter put Krazy Horse to sleep with a triangle choke during the melee.
The rumour, however, was always that Krazy Horse actually got into a fight at some stage with Wanderlei Silva – supposedly after he’d come round after being choked by Marcello – and knocked the PRIDE champion out cold. It’s still Krazy Horse’s calling card to this day – after a win this past December, Bennett called Wanderlei out again.
Is there any truth to this myth? I’m not 100% sure. Firstly, you can see during the Marcello/Bennett clip that it’s during the Dan Henderson/Yuki Kondo fight from that show (Shockwave 2004) which means that if Wanderlei did get knocked out, he probably went out afterwards and fought MARK HUNT to a decision, which doesn’t make much sense.
Something clearly happened, though. One rumour I heard on mma.tv at the time was that Krazy Horse had knocked ‘Silva’ out, but it wasn’t Wanderlei and was actually Jean Silva, another Chute Boxe fighter. Who knows, though?
The myth persists today and if it is true, it must definitely be one that haunts a proud guy like Wanderlei Silva.
