|
Less than 10 months after his title bid against Chris Weidman ended in a ghastly scene, former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva sat perched upon a stage on a Tuesday afternoon in Rio de Janeiro, his tortured screams and mangled leg replaced by a seemingly endless cascade of easy smiles and even a sampling of his best Whitney Houston falsetto.
The memories of that night at UFC 168 will always linger for Silva, when a checked leg kick led to the shattering of his left fibula and tibia — as gruesome an end to a celebrated dynasty as could be written — but for now Silva’s story continues. With surgery and rehabilitation nearly behind him, the 39-year-old intends to return in early 2015, fighting in a blockbuster fight against Stockton’s favorite son, Nick Diaz.
And in truth, it’s a moment that Silva once believed would never come.
“I play around because I have to play around,” Silva acknowledged through a translator. “But it’s something I don’t like to remember too much. 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.
-
|
|