UFC 147 results: Instinct guides Rich Franklin to victory over Wanderlei Silva

By Case Keefer (contact)

Saturday, June 23, 2012 | 10:40 p.m.

Note: Full results from the undercard of UFC 147 are available at the bottom of the page.

Approximately 15 minutes after Wanderlei Silva floored Rich Franklin with a right hand at UFC 147 Saturday night, the promotion replayed the clip in the arena.

The whole late second-round sequence that transpired in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, caught Franklin by surprise.

“I don’t remember that,” Franklin said while still in the octagon. “Nice knockdown. Maybe that will be my next twitter avatar.”

Luckily for Franklin, the evening’s main event wasn’t a game of memory. It was a fight, one that Franklin valiantly came back to win by unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 49-46).

Franklin would love to share how he persevered through Silva’s barrage, but there’s a problem. The former middleweight champion couldn’t recall the next 10 minutes of the fight either.

“If you want me to be real honest,” Franklin said, “I remember the second round and then it was the fifth round.”

Franklin was able to beat Silva for the second time in his career by out-landing the home-country legend and working his jab in the middle rounds.

Franklin never came as close to finishing as Silva did when he followed his knockdown with vicious ground-and-pound, but it made no difference. Franklin was the better fighter for 23 of the bout’s 25 minutes.

“At the end of the second round, I thought I was going to be able to knock him out and I really wanted to,” Silva said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to.

“I think I pushed it a bit too much.”

The other Brazilian star on the card, heavyweight Fabricio Werdum, got his knockout. Werdum landed an uppercut on Chicago police officer Mike Russow’s chin and finished him with more strikes seconds later at the 2:28 mark of the first round.

Werdum described the strike as self-explanatory.

“You know, it’s boom,” Werdum said.

Werdum won his second straight since returning to the UFC, handing Russow his first loss in the octagon.

For Franklin, the victory was his first in more than two years. He hadn’t fought in 16 months while recovering from injuries. It’s one he’ll certainly treasure — once he pieces together what happened.

“I was operating on auto-pilot for a while,” Franklin said with a smile.

Check below for the results from the rest of the UFC 147 card.

Cezar Ferreira, a middleweight who trains locally at Xtreme Couture, defeated Sergio Moraes by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28). With the victory, Ferreira locked up a six-figure UFC contract by winning “The Ultimate Fighter Brazil” middleweight tournament.

Rony Jason won “The Ultimate Fighter Brazil” featherweight championship in the first of two co-main events. Jason scored a unanimous-decision victory over Godofredo Pepey by taking the final two rounds on all three judges’ scorecards.

Hacran Dias pulled off an upset in his UFC debut. Dias defeated Yuri Alcantara, who was previously undefeated in the octagon, by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28) in their featherweight bout.

Rodrigo Damm submitted Anistavio Medeiros with a rear-naked choke at 2:12 of the first round in their featherweight bout. Damm rocked Medeiros with punches to get him to the ground.

Middleweight newcomer Francisco Drinaldo made a statement against International Fight League-veteran Delson Heleno. Drinaldo beat Heleno by TKO at 4:21 of the first round after administering high amounts of damage.

Opinions were split down the middle on who won a catchweight (150 pounds) fight between Hugo Vianna and John Teixeira. But two of the three judges saw it the same, awarding Vianna a split decision (29-28, 29-28, 28-29) over Teixeira.

Thiago Perpetuo defeated Leonardo Mafra via TKO at 1:04 of the third round. Perpetuo started slow, but began out-striking Mafra by the end of the second round.

Marcos Vinicius knocked out Wagner Campos at 1:04 of the third round in their featherweight bout. It was a tough defeat for Campos, who won the first two rounds by taking Vinicius down.

The card got off to an ominous start when the judges ruled a featherweight bout between Milton Viera and Felipe Arantes a draw. Two of the rounds were close, but the draw was baffling because one judge awarded Viera a 10-8 score in the first round.

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.