UFC 117 Results: Once again, the Ultimate Fighting Championship delivered the goods, as UFC 117 lived up to all the hype and Oracle Arena in Oak-Town, California was treated to a great night of fights! With the UFC middleweight championship on the line, huge sports betting odds underdog, Chael Sonnen went into the Octagon against the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, Anderson Silva and manhandled him both on their feet and on the ground for almost five rounds.
“Anderson Silva overcame adversity and came back and won,” said UFC president Dana White. “He came from being in deep water. Sonnen put himself on the map last week saying some crazy [expletive], and he put himself on the map again tonight.”
It was very inspiring to see the way Sonnen backed up every single word he said, to the point that even the Oracle Arena crowd went from chanting SILVA’s name to USA too SONNEN! If people didn’t know who Chael Sonnen was before Saturday night, they will now, as this country boy earned the respect of everyone for his desire, drive, and ultimately cojones.
"I'm only here to be No.1. If I'm not the best I'm gonna move on in life," Sonnen said. "But for now I got the silver medal."
In the end, the Spider, proved to be just that. After getting rocked on his feet and battered on the ground, Silva pulled off an armbar submission to avoid a huge upset with less than 2 minutes left in the fight. After some confusion weather Sonnen had tapped or not, both fighters spoke to Joe Rogan.
“What I have going through my mind is going back home and spending time with my family,” Silva said. “I still have teammates Rafael Feijao going for a championship and the Nogueira brothers fighting. After that, that’s when I’ll think about what’s next. Whatever the UFC decides is fine with me.”
But after such a classic bout in which we saw the Spider pushed and beatup like never before, the talks of an immediate rematch began instantaneously. “It’s definitely a rematch people want to see,” White said. “We can definitely do a rematch. It was awesome. I loved that Chael talked the smack he did and then went out and backed it up.”
“There’s no question this sport is different from any other,” said Sonnen. “In other sports, like basketball or baseball, there are championships, but they are really national champions. In this sport, we scour planet Earth and came up with the two best guys. In the rankings tomorrow, we’ll still be the two best guys. I have one goal. It’s to be the world champion. And I’m not backing up on that goal.”
Other UFC 117 Results include:
Jon Fitch def. Thiago Alves (unanimous decision)
Clay Guida def. Rafael dos Anjos (3rd round submission)
Matt Hughes def. Ricardo Almeida (1st round submission)
Junior dos Santos def. Roy Nelson (unanimous decision)
