Thoughts on Paulo Filho

Filho is depressed, he’s struggled with addiction and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the guy has issues. When he returns to fight Chael Sonnen, some will see him, baselessly, as the underdog. Everyone worries about the emotional state of a fighter, especially a fighter who seems as unbeatable as Filho did during his Pride career.

Every time I watch video of Filho fighting or training, I see a freak of nature. Not simply a fighter who’s strength is ridiculous and who has the one element that most jiu-jitsu fighters lack cornered (that being substantial wrestling). Filho is a freak of nature because he has blackbelt level jiu-jitsu and he applies it like a blackbelt.

That may seem like a redudancy, but there are a lot of BJJ blackbelts who’s games go all to hell as soon as strikes are factored into it. While Anderson Silva is certainly one of the fighters who has adapted his jiu-jitsu to MMA (perhaps because he only ever trained jiu-jitsu for MMA), Filho has done it on an even higher level.

That said, below the fold are some thoughts on his fight with Sonnen and the rest of his career.

Does Chael Sonnen Have Ely’s Number?

I get this question a lot from friends who are marginal fans of the WEC and hardcore fans of the UFC. This whole understanding is based on the first round of their fight, where Sonnen got to Filho’s back and everyone thought Filho was in trouble.

Filho is a BJJ blackbelt who applies his jiu-jitsu like a BJJ blackbelt. I was worried during the fight, I’m not going to lie, but as soon as Filho moved on in the second round and caught the armbar that finished Sonnen (one of the most technically saavy submissions I’ve seen from Filho, and that’s saying something).

The match played out like I expected it to. The wrestler displayed superior wrestling, but the jiu-jitsu fighter won with superior jiu-jitsu. While Sonnen put Filho in danger, there’s a reason why Sonnen is not ranked by most professional journalists and Filho is top five (in my mind, and many others, top two). Filho is calm and he will work until he gets to the position he can win from and he’ll finish.

Coming to the UFC

I’ll be honest, there’s no one in the WEC who I think can challenge Filho as a contender, and the UFC desperately needs a tough middleweight who can power through the mediocre fighters and earn a shot against Anderson Silva. As great as Okami and Kampmann are, they are not clear cut contenders. Kampmann has health issues and Okami lost to Franklin not too long ago, as well as that mediocre win over MacDonald.

There’s only one fighter in the UFC 185 pound division who will beat Filho at his game, and that’s Dean Lister. Anderson Silva might be able to out grapple Filho, though that remains to be seen (personally, I think that Anderson would win that fight standing up). Filho is a master at imposing his game, and he has done it to every opponent he’s seen. It’s more than worth his while to try his luck on a bigger stage.

The real issue though, is that if Filho wants to keep being called a top 185 warrior, it’s not going to be hard to be seen that way by the hardcore fans, but if he wants the mainstream to believe that he’s a top middleweight, he needs to prove himself in the UFC, where the Joe Six-Pack fans of MMA can see him. Once he does that, he’s going to put him in a much better financial situation, so we may see that soon.

Fighting Anderson Silva

I don’t think that Filho will take that fight. He’s said openly that he doesn’t want to fight a fellow Brazilian, but he does want to fight the top fighter in the world, and as long as he is winning consistently, somthing he’s more than capable of, he will make this the best possible middleweight matchup the Zuffa guys (or anyone, for that matter) can offer.

Personally, it’s a fight I’d like to see after Filho spends about a year in the UFC, so long as Anderson remains dominant.

The Distant Future

The question really becomes not “who is Filho going to fight in the WEC?” We know that those guys are weak, and that while some of them may make for interesting matchups with Paulo, none of them are going to beat him, at least not soon. The question is who is he going to fight when he comes to the UFC? The answer, I think, should be Drew McFedries, a dominant, strong wrestler with substantial power. I think it makes for an exciting fight, and it would be a challenge for Filho. Filho, if he is still the Paulo Filho that we saw in Pride, he needs a new challenge.