With one short sentence, middleweight champion Anderson Silva essentially rendered meaningless a fight mixed martial arts fans have drooled over for years. Silva also provided UFC president Dana White with his biggest headache since White was tasked with finding a way out of a $44 million hole in 2005.

How could anyone care whether Silva fights welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre when Silva is so obviously running from light heavyweight champion Jon Jones?

Before Jones burst into prominence last year by going on the most dominant 18-month run in the company's history, MMA fans were salivating about a potential Silva-St-Pierre superfight.

Anderson Silva eats a punch while fighting against Stephan Bonnar at UFC 153. (EFE)

Buying the fight would have required a leap of faith, though, because St-Pierre is a far smaller man who has yet to show the ability to compete with opponents Silva's size. Silva is naturally about 30 pounds heavier than St-Pierre and fights at middleweight, where the limit is 185 pounds, 15 pounds higher than the welterweight limit of

Read More »from Anderson Silva-Jon Jones superfight drawing much more interest than potential Silva-GSP fight

CARSON, Calif. – A pack of reporters pursued Brandon Rios into the bowels of the Home Depot Center. Moments earlier, Rios ended one of the great fights of the century by pummeling Mike Alvarado along the ropes and forcing referee Pat Russell to stop it at 1:57 of the seventh round.

Rios spied the reporters, many of whom had blasted him in December and then again in April for missing weight in a pair of lightweight title fights, and the broad smile across his face instantly turned into a sneer.

Brandon Rios celebrates his seventh-round TKO win over Mike Alvarado. (Getty)"Did I prove a point to you [expletives]?" Rios said, poking his finger at one reporter.

He'd won what most certainly will become the 2012 Fight of the Year in dramatic fashion, and likely earned a shot at the winner of the Dec. 8 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez.

Yet, Rios wasn't content. He hadn't forgotten the slights directed his way and wouldn’t let them pass, even in the shining moment of his professional career.

His desire, his love of the battle and, most

Read More »from Brandon Rios hits back at detractors after win over Mike Alvarado in Fight of the Year candidate

Mike Alvarado is 33-0 with 23 knockouts and is easily one of the 10 most exciting boxers in the world.

But when he sets foot in the ring Saturday to meet Brandon Rios at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., in a 12-round super lightweight fight, it will mark the first time he has ever appeared on either HBO or Showtime.

Mike Alvarado pauses while training for his fight with Brandon Rios. (AP)

It's almost incomprehensible. Alvarado has appeared on the undercards of a few pay-per-view shows and has competed on some Spanish-language networks, but Saturday's bout will be his first in the so-called big-time.

Television ratings at HBO are up, which is a good sign. Boxing has had a solid year by its standards, but all of that is relative. The ratings, even the good ones, that boxing draws now on HBO and Showtime are only a fraction of what it used to be just two decades ago.

When George Foreman was fighting on HBO in his comeback, his ratings would dwarf anything being done now.

"George and those guys had been on network television and people

Read More »from Mike Alvarado, Brandon Rios get shot at big time

Anderson Silva isn't the fastest fighter in the UFC, nor is he its hardest puncher. He doesn't have the best chin, nor is he the organization's strongest man.

But few, if any, fighters in mixed martial arts practice with the kind of attention to detail that Silva pays. It's why he'd stand in front of a wall and repeatedly let someone behind him fire a ball at the wall – just so the ball would rebound directly toward his face.

Anderson Silva has said there's no way he'd fight Jon Jones. (MMA Weekly)The ball coming off the wall was meant to mimic punches flying at him. For hours, he'd slip left, slide right, and duck under as the ball whizzed past his face.

"That's why he is so special," lightweight Cristiano Marcello said of Silva, the UFC's middleweight champion. "Other fighters don't think of these kinds of things. But Anderson's desire to be great was so strong and he would work and work to make things just perfect."

It was a simple, but very effective drill for a fighter who wanted to stand in front of an opponent but not get hit very

Read More »from At 37 years old, Anderson Silva shows he still has some staying power

Walk into a room filled with fighters, and 90 percent of them will have a story to tell about how fighting helped them escape poverty. In some cases, it helped rescue them from extreme poverty.

Glover Teixeira, who is poised to become the next big thing in the UFC, has his own story of escape.

Teixeira's story, though, veers off the normal rags-to-riches path. He grew up in a small town in Brazil with not so much as one traffic signal. He lived in homes that had no electricity.

Glover Teixeira worked as a landscaper while training to become an MMA fighter. (UFC)He moved to the U.S., not to fight, but to try to secure a job to earn money to support his family. He landed in Connecticut in 1999 and went to work as a landscaper.

And a landscaper he might have remained were it not for an offhand comment to a friend about boxer Mike Tyson.

Teixeira, who fights Fabio Maldonado Saturday at the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the main card of UFC 153, casually mentioned to his friend that he was thinking of trying boxing because of how much he enjoyed

Read More »from Glover Teixeira poised to become UFC star after rising from humble life in Brazil

Winning, Brandon Rios says in one breath, is all that matters. Getting his hand raised at the conclusion of his super lightweight fight with Mike Alvarado on Saturday in Carson, Calif., is all that matters to him.

Rios goes on to talk about the impact of a win, how it might position him for a 2013 match with either Manny Pacquiao or Juan Manuel Marquez.

"The most important thing is coming out of that place with the win," he says.

Brandon Rios celebrates his win vs. John Murray for the WBA lightweight title. (AP)

But his voice lacks conviction as he speaks those words. Rios is the ultimate fan's fighter and he knows that, in this bout at least, it's not only that he wins but the manner in which he does that it is going to matter most.

This is a 26-year-old who is keenly aware of the expectations surrounding his fight, which will be the opener of an HBO doubleheader on Saturday. Promoters toss around the moniker, "Fight of the Year candidate," lightly, but this is one of those events in which they don't need to do much hyping.

All they need to do to fill

Read More »from Brandon Rios sees opportunity for all-time classic in fight against Mike Alvarado

Mike Tomlin isn't going to quit coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers and try to make it as a player in the NFL. The notion sounds absurd. That, though, is exactly the transition that Cristiano Marcello made in mixed martial arts.

Cristiano Marcello in training for "The Ultimate Fighter Live." (Getty Images)He was a highly regarded coach at age 22, overseeing the jiu-jitsu training of the iconic Chute Boxe team. Marcello, who once lived with the legendary Rickson Gracie, taught MMA stars such as Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua jiu-jitsu when he was barely into adulthood himself.

"I love to coach," Marcello says.

And he's still coaching. His Curitiba, Brazil-based team, the CM System Fight Team, is highly regarded in the mixed martial arts world.

But Marcello, now a grizzled veteran at 34, hasn't lost the desire to compete. And so, Marcello will fight at UFC 153 at HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro. He'll meet Reza Madadi in a three-round lightweight bout.

"I always wanted to be a fighter, from the early days, but there wasn't a

Read More »from Love of MMA keeps Cristiano Marcello involved as fighter and coach: 'I would do this for free'

It's not often that UFC president Dana White admits he didn't know what he had.

But White concedes that when his company signed middleweight Anderson Silva in late April 2006, it never occurred to him that he had just signed the man who would go on to become the greatest mixed martial arts fighter in history.

Anderson Silva lands a kick to the jaw of Vitor Belfort at UFC 126. (Getty)

Silva was just past his 29th birthday when he signed with the UFC. He was 17-4 overall and was the Cage Rage middleweight champion.

"I knew he was a good fighter," White said. "What I didn't know was that he would become this monster that he's become."

Since joining the UFC, Silva has gone 16-0 overall and 11-0 in title fights. He's amassed a mind-boggling number of records including most consecutive wins (16), most title fight wins (11), most successful title defenses (10), most knockdowns (16) and highest strike accuracy (67.6 percent).

As he's blown through the opposition, he's become almost a mythical figure in the sport.

This is the story of four men who

Read More »from Anderson Silva's former foes recount what it was like facing the G.O.A.T. in the Octagon