It was a beatdown of almost unthinkable proportions.
On this day 10 years ago, Anderson Silva challenged Rich Franklin for the undisputed Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight crown in the UFC 64 main event at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. “The Spider” needed less than three minutes to rearrange Franklin’s face before 10,173 stunned fans, many of them caught off-guard by the technical carnage they witnessed.
Franklin had lost just once in his career and entered the bout on an eight-fight winning streak during which only David Loiseau had gone the distance with him.