(Rich Franklin looks at this poster to cure his hiccups)

Anderson Silva puts the UFC’s middleweight class on notice 5 years ago at UFN 5

(Video courtesy of Thisis50/TonyScorpio)

Why it matters:
For those who didn’t know who Anderson Silva was prior to his UFC debut against Chris Leben at Ultimate Fight Night 5 back on June 28, 2006, they knew who he was after the fight. Silva was the slight favorite to win the bout (at – 170 to Leben’s +200), but if oddsmakers knew then what we know now, they would be kicking themselves for giving Leben a shot in hell at beating “The Spider.” It took Silva just 49 seconds to dismantle the previously thought un-KO’able TUF 1 veteran whose head was (and is) often described in the same vein as a fire hydrant. Those in the know from witnessing Silva leave a pile of PRIDE and Cage Rage opponents in his wake were not surprised that he beat “The Crippler,” but rather how quickly he did it and the devastating fashion he did it in.

Leben still wakes some nights in a cold sweat, screaming, from the recurring nightmare of Silva turning him into a human bobble-head with his pinpoint jabs.

(Despite being held in a cage, MMA is safer than high school football)

With today’s news that 30-year-old fighter Michael Kirkham died as a result of injuries sustained in a sanctioned MMA bout Saturday night in South Carolina, many fans and pundits are worried that the implications will mean U.S. states like New York and Canadian provinces like Ontario could refuse to sanction the sport as a result of the latest tragedy.

Although Kirkham’s death, which came as a result of a brain hemorrhage — the same fatal injury that took the life of the only other fighter on record to have died from fight-related injuries, Houston’s Sam Vasquez in 2007, it is still unclear whether or not if he brought any pre-existing neurological disorders or injuries into the cage with him on Saturday night.

A proper pre-fight medical, like the ones most athletic commissions require, that include regular CT scans, blood work and MRIs could have caught any abnormalities like the one doctors discovered in Thiago Alves prior to his UFC 111 fight with Jon Fitch.