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Originally Posted by DeToxRox
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Clinical. Silva looks like he's fighting a drunk at a bar, the way he casually dodges those punches. I couldn't tell at the time, and that gif still makes me wonder: was Forrest waving "don't stop the fight" or "no more, I give up" as he hit the canvas? Giving up on the ground before even taking a punch seems very UN-Forrest Griffin (when I hear his name I immediately think of that whack-ass arm he was carrying around in TUF1, and then I think of that awesome, gutsy finale, followed by several gutsy fights and a belt), but the way he scurried out of there certainly doesn't help his case. Having only seen 4 minutes of him whiffing around, I can't judge too much, but he certainly seemed 'off' in his short appearance inside
and outside of the ring.
Did he change up his training/strategy drastically for this fight (he sure looked more tentative, but was that intended?), and could that have taken him so far out of his comfort zone, or was he just plainly so physically and mentally battered, just half-way through the first round, that he was waving "no mas" as he fell to the floor from a jab, and then zipped out of the ring in a cloud of smoke?
In hindsight, the whole thing played out like Forrest came in there with zero confidence in himself, before the fight had even begun. From his tentative attack, to the half-hearted head kicks, reeling backwards (or hitting the deck) from all contact, getting taunted by Silva as he pawed away ineffectively at empty space, until he finally hit the ground waving, and ran out of the cage before anybody had the chance to ask him what had happened. I hope he's able to recover quickly, because although I think his career could easily rebound from a loss to such a high quality opponent, I'd imagine the task of recovering mentally and emotionally from a schoolyard whooping like that is probably a bigger hurdle than recovering in the rankings.