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Paulo Cesar Silva

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #36: The phrase "freakshow fight" is an integral part of the mixed martial arts lexicon, but it's not always correctly used. People use it to describe fights with slight skill mismatches, or fights where one competitor is noticeably taller, or one fighter is on a losing streak. Pride, with its mix of elite and considerably-less-than-elite talent and its total lack of government regulation, was the golden age of freakshow fights--fights where one or both competitors simply had no business fighting, period. Paulo Cesar da Silva--Giant Silva--is, to this day, the platonic ideal of the freakshow fighter.

Silva did not come from any kind of martial background. As a 7'2" giant, he was a natural fit for basketball, but he was never the most coordinated player--the height of his career was being a reserve player for the Brazilian Olympic team. The mass of his career was devoted to professional wrestling: He was scouted out of the Massachusetts-based World Wrestling Alliance in 1998 and picked up very quickly by the WWF as part of their eternal quest to hire anyone over seven feet tall. He was dubbed Giant Silva, and thrown into one of the most bizarre gimmicks the company ever came up with: The Oddities, a stable of purported sideshow freaks managed by horrorcore rappers The Insane Clown Posse. Silva was the tallest of the group--which included another 6'10" giant, a 380-pound former sumo wrestler and my childhood crush Luna Vachon--and also the least mobile. In 1998 Silva was already 35 years old, and as with all acromegalics, he carried much more wear and tear than your average person, let alone wrestler. His WWF tenure didn't even last a year, and shortly afterward he made his way to Japan to join NJPW--and with the rise of Pride, Antonio Inoki saw mixed martial arts dollar signs in his gentle giant.

Silva made his mixed martial arts debut at Shockwave 2003, Pride's big end-of-the-year show. To set the proper perspective, Silva had turned 40 that year, had 15 years of athletic wear and tear on his body and his only martial training was about a week of jiu-jitsu classes with the Gracie family on Inoki's dime. Pride put him up against the 21-9 Heath Herring, who was fifteen years younger, a world title contender, and ranked in the top ten at heavyweight. It was not pretty. Silva didn't even know how to throw punches--he threw winging, wrestling-style hammer blows, and repeatedly chased Herring around the ring windmilling his arms at him.

That was Silva's career, encapsulated. He was the freakshow jobber king: No fighting skill, no desire to hurt people, no real business fighting, and yet he fought six times in Pride--and even won once, in the opening round of the 2004 heavyweight grand prix, because even though former sumo Henry "Sentoryu" Miller was able to take him down, at 5'9" he was incapable of reaching him to hit him, and eventually gassed and got submitted. He was knocked out or submitted in every other fight. He'd notch one final win at K-1 Dynamite!! 2006 against the 500-pound sumo champion Akebono, the second pillar of the freakshow fight industry, who fell over in mid-clinch and fell victim to a kimura.

That's the legacy of Giant Silva. He went 2-6 in his career, with his two victories coming against opponents who were essentially physically incapable of fighting. Two-thirds of his real fights were agaisnt other professional wrestlers. Not once in his career of smiling awkwardly while angry men beat the crap out of him did he display any kind of martial aptitude to justify his continued employment by Pride.

And -that- is a freakshow fighter.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride: Shockwave 2003 vs Herring / Pride: Shockwave 2005 vs Thompson / K-1 Dynamite!! 2006 vs Akebono / WWF Oddities outfit). Will chop you. In the face.