Anderson Silva: 'I thought I wouldn't be able to fight again'
His leg shattered in the middle of the cage.He fell, clutched the broken limb, and screamed in pain.
It was the second consecutive TKO loss for the once dominant UFC middleweight champion. At 38 years old, it appeared to all the world as though Anderson Silva's great MMA career was done.
On Tuesday, the fighter (33-6) admitted to media members gathered at a press conference that he also thought his days of competiting were over, in the immediate aftermath of his devastating second-straight loss to Chris Weidman (12-0) at UFC 168.
"It's something I don't like to remember too much," Silva said, of his traumatic leg injury.
"I went through the worst month of my life. It was a lot of pain the moment when I broke my leg. When I realized my leg was broken, I thought my career was over. So a million things went through my mind."
Throught the past months, we've all watched the proud Brazilian soldier on through a faster than expected rehabilitation and recovery period. In fact, he's now cleared and set to face Nick Diaz (26-9) in a return bout in early 2015 at UFC 183.
However, at the start of his recovery, Silva became seriously depressed. "You might think that depression is not something serious, but I was depressed," he revealed.
"I was very upset, and if I didn't have the people that I have by my side, maybe I wouldn't come back."
"The Spider" went on to say that he eventually became motivated to come back, in order to set certain things right in his mind and his career. "This thing about returning, it's because I feel that I let something go in this whole road, fighting," he said.
"In my last fights, I let something go, and I'm looking for that again. That's what I'm after...After I got injured, I learned to value a few things that I had let go of, some things that I had left behind, and that changed me a lot. I'm more mature, I'm in a different phase [in my life]. So I'm very happy to be able to come back and do this again. I thought I wouldn't be able to fight again, so I'm training even more now."
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