UFC 110: The new and improved Wanderlei Silva

With a new nose, a new face, a new coach and a new weight class, Wanderlei Silva looked like an entirely new fighter rather than an old, punch-drunk dude clinging to his past.

Although we didn’t see any of those crazy flurries of punches that helped earn Silva the nickname “The Axe Murderer,” he controlled the pace of the fight and landed lots of key shots to beat Michael Bisping at UFC 110 by unanimous decision. All three judges scored the bout, 29-28.

“I’m looking pretty now,” the Brazilian middleweight said about his newly reconstructed nose.

Silva attacked in the final seconds of each round and was successful each time. He landed a nice flurry at the end of the first round, but it wasn’t enough to steal the round from Bisping.

Silva nearly won the fight in the final 15 seconds of the second round with a tight guillotine choke.

Bisping absorbed some head-snapping shots in the third round, and then got knocked down in the final 10 seconds. For some reason, we all frame Bisping by the loss to Dan Henderson at UFC 100. We should stop doing that. He’s an entirely different fighter now. He circles in both directions and has improved his jiu-jitsu. Despite this loss, Bisping will continue to make noise in the middleweight division.

“It was an absolute pleasure to step in there with someone like Wanderlei Silva,” Bisping said. “I feel like he got the decision because of that knockdown at the end there.”