Jardine: The legend slayer
by Ben Blackmore, 13 May 2008
“The Dean of Mean” Keith Jardine has already dished out a beating to Chuck Liddell, and now he is gunning for legend number two Wanderlei Silva at “UFC 84: ILL WILL.”
Jardine stunned the MMA world when he convincingly beat Liddell by split points decision back in September, knocking the former champ down in the process.
Liddell has since said he wasn’t feeling sharp that night, and so Jardine must now prove himself again against another UFC icon Wanderlei “The Axe Murderer” Silva.
You need to upgrade your Flash Player
This is replaced by the Flash content.
Place your alternate content here and users without the Flash plugin or with
Javascript turned off will see this. Content here allows you to leave out
noscript
tags. Include a link to
bypass the detection if you wish.
The kickboxing expert feels he has never received the respect he is due for a career that has seen him beat Liddell, Forrest Griffin and Wilson Gouveia, but he intends to change that in Las Vegas.
“I want to prove to everybody what I’m all about. I’ve had a couple of fights and people have questioned how good I am,” said Jardine.
“Now I want to make my place in MMA history by beating not one but two of the icons of the sport.
“I’m expecting to fight “The Axe Murderer”. The guy we haven’t seen in a while. The aggressive one who fights across the ring throwing his haymakers.”
Should Jardine beat Silva he would surely deserve his crack of the whip at the UFC light-heavyweight title, having already beaten Liddell – the man who lost the belt to current king Rampage Jackson.
Liddell has since marked his own return to form in one of THE fights of UFC history – beating Silva, but Jardine reads nothing into the fact that his last victory came against the guy who delivered Silva’s last loss.
“Chuck beating Wanderlei doesn’t give me any extra confidence for this fight. The styles match up weird in this sport.
“We haven’t seen how my style matches up against Wanderlei.
“What I can’t wait for is being in the middle of the second or third round, being sweaty, bloody, tired, just me and him – seeing who the bigger man is on the day.
“All the press interviews, all the pre-fight, it’s all garbage. I’m just here to get to the middle of the second round and you’re surviving on guts and instinct. That’s what we live for as fighters.”