8 Best Late Comebacks In UFC History

At UFC 117, Anderson Silva would find himself challenged in the octagon in an unprecedented way. Chael Sonnen had earned a shot at long-time UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva by dispatching of his fellow contenders with his relentless wrestling style.

Alongside his performances in the cage, Sonnen had embarked on a campaign of verbal assault towards Silva, delivering some of the greatest insults in MMA history.

Despite this, Silva hadn't faced any real adversity in the UFC up to this point and most thought that Sonnen would go the way of all of Silva's previous opponents.

That was not going to be the case.

As expected, Sonnen used his vastly superior wrestling chops to dictate where the fight took place, but completely unexpectedly, he also won most of the striking exchanges against The Spider.

The dominance displayed by Sonnen was such that Silva absorbed 289 strikes in the fight, compared with just 208 in his 11 prior UFC outings.

With four rounds already in the books, Sonnen had started to pulling away on the scorecards, decisively winning every round.

Silva remained active from the bottom, however, landing a number of clean elbow strikes. He also gained control of the wrist of The American Gangster, using it to lock in a deep triangle choke.

Less than two minutes away from losing his UFC Middleweight Title, Silva managed to make his opponent tap to retain his belt.

In this fight, Silva showed that he was just as capable of overcoming serious adversity, as he was dominating as he had in all his previous UFC fights.

Result: Anderson Silva def. Chael Sonnen via submission (triangle choke) – Round 5, 3:10.