Antonio Silva Plans On Using The Same Strategy Against Cain Velasquez

Antonio Silva has earned his shot at Cain Velasquez with two nasty knockouts over Travis Browne and Alistair Overeem. ‘Bigfoot’ suffered a terrible beating at the hands of Velasquez in their first fight in 2012, lasting all of four minutes before the ref mercifully ended the fight.

My first thought when Silva was awarded a rematch, this time for the title, was ‘What will Silva change?’. Well it would appear as though the Brazilian giant plans on bringing the same strategy as in the first bout with Velasquez. Check out this interview from MMAWeekly:

“I’m going to train the same strategy as I trained before,” said Bigfoot.  “The problem was my mind, my adrenaline. But I’m going do the same thing. I have a lot of skills to win this fight.”

With his most recent third round demolition of Alistair Overeem at UFC 156 I can sort of see where Silva is coming from. He has massive power in those huge hands and we know that Cain can be knocked out. Silva continued:

“The first fight with Cain is very important because I learned a lot from it,” said Silva.  “[That] fight, I was very nervous because it was my first fight in the UFC.  Now I’m very, very different. I have a good camp. I’m going to do the same strategy, and this fight will be very different.”

So Silva is confident that the fight will go differently this time, but using the same strategy I can’t see how it would. Although ‘Bigfoot’ could be trying to play mind games here, I wonder if Velasquez will change his game at all in the lead up to their UFC 160 championship tilt.