Gunnar Nelson vs Claudio Silva booked for UFC London
UFC London has been adding some very interesting bouts as of late, and this one is no different, as Gunnar Nelson returns to the octagon opposing fellow BJJ expert Claudio Silva.
This event is to go down at the O2 Arena in London, England on March 19, 2022.
Both of these men were once looked at like they could possess some serious problems for their entire welterweight division.
Gunnar Nelson came to the UFC back in 2012 as a young man with a record of 9-0-1, on a nine-fight win, and finish streak. He was Iceland’s most promising up-and-coming Karate talent at just 16 years of age, and won a number of championships in the art. He currently holds a 2nd-degree black belt in Goju-ryu Karate.
He gave that up to train BJJ at age 17, and was awarded his black belt at just 19 years of age under the tutelage of Renzo Gracie, which is just unheard of. To be a Gracie black belt at that age, after just over two years of training, there’s some unparallel talent there.
Even BJ Penn took three years to be awarded his BJJ black belt, and he earned it in a quicker period of time than any American ever.
Nelson is also a world champion in BJJ at both the brown & black belt level.
Nevertheless, he’d win his UFC debut via submission (guillotine choke), before out-grappling fellow BJJ black belt Jorge Santiago to a unanimous decision.
Two submission victories would follow over Omari Akhmedov (guillotine choke) and Zak Cummings (rear naked choke), both stud grapplers in their own regard, before losing a five-round split decision to Rick Story, the first defeat of his career.
Nelson then submitted (rear naked choke) Brandon Thatch, a very promising talent at the time, before being absolutely mauled by the greatest BJJ practitioner to ever compete, and have success in MMA, Demian Maia.
Once more, two victories would follow, as he submitted current ACA welterweight champion Albert Tumenov (neck crack) and Alan Jouban (guillotine choke).
His record was now 16-2-1, and he was going into a fight with Santiago Ponzinibbio, a fight most everyone was picking him to win. However, Ponzinibbio KO’d Nelson with a vicious combination in just 82 seconds.
Nelson then rebounded by submitting Alex Oliveira (rear naked choke) in an absolute war, before dropping his last two bouts to Leon Edwards (split decision) and Gilbert Burns (unanimous decision).
To his credit, or defense, those last two are the No. 2 & No. 3 ranked welterweights in the world right now, and he nearly beat Edwards, who’s getting the next title shot at Kamaru Usman.
Claudio Silva, funnily enough, also started out with Karate, before switching to Capoeira, and eventually BJJ at age 18. He came to the UFC back in 2014 with a record of 9-1, though he hasn’t been the most active in his tenure.
As you see, both men had ten fights prior to joining the UFC:
Both had gone the distance one time (Nelson in a draw, Silva in a win), both men had ten fights with nine wins (Nelson nine finishes, Silva eight finishes), neither won their first fight (nine-fight win streaks for both), though neither had lost yet (Nelson had a draw, Silva’s defeat came via DQ).
The Brazilian started off by defeated TUF: Smashes finalist Brad Scott (unanimous decision) in his promotional debut, before defeating Leon Edwards (split decision) in his next outing.
Funny how they both had very close bouts with Leon Edwards.
Those two bouts were in 2014, though we wouldn’t see him compete again until three-and-a-half years later in the middle of 2018, where he defeated Nordine Taleb via submission (rear naked choke) in round one.
This was followed up by a third round submission victory over Danny Roberts (armbar), nearly a year later, before doing the same to late replacement Cole Williams (rear naked choke) in round one.
This improved his record to 14-1, he was looking like the best once-fight-a-year fighter we had in the UFC.
However, he returned over 14 months later to face another late replacement, this time James Krause, who defeated him via unanimous decision. This was followed up by another unanimous decision defeat to TUF 11 winner Court McGee in his only bout of 2021.
Nelson himself hasn’t fought in over two years, the last time we saw him compete was in September of 2019.
Now that he’s 33 years old, he feels he’s ready to return to the octagon against 39-year-old Claudio Silva.
Nelson comes in with a record of 17-5-1 (16 finishes), while Silva comes in with a record of 14-3 (11 finishes), both having lost their last two fights.
How do you see this one playing out?
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