by Nick Meyer, BETUS.COM – BET NOW!

Whether or not you think Anderson Silva is the “best pound-for-pound fighter in the world” as the UFC is so quick to proclaim, one thing’s for sure: he’s easily one of the top three along with Fedor Emelianenko and Georges St. Pierre.

Silva is one of, if not the best strikers mixed martial arts has ever seen, and he will go toe-to-toe on Saturday, April 18th against Thales Leites, a guy who isn’t exactly the most explosive or polished striker in the middleweight division.

That huge advantage along with the rest of his MMA game has given Silva the huge edge in the Sportsbook, going off at -600 to while Leites is an enticing +350.

Leites, who is somewhat of an unknown, especially among fellow title contenders, is 14-1 in his career, with the lone loss coming against Martin Kampmann.

He doesn’t have a whole lot of top wins to his name, although his UFC 85 victory over Nate Marquardt looks better and better as time passes, despite the fact that it was a split decision. Leites has scored 9 of his 14 wins by submission, but Silva is a black belt on the ground in addition to his brilliant striking game.

Leites is going to have a hard time mounting any kind of offense in this fight, and the only chance he seems to have against Silva is if he gets bored and makes a mistake.

Silva almost did just that against Patrick Cote at UFC 90 in Chicago. Some people thought Cote was standing in and doing well against Silva but from cageside it looked as if Silva was getting bored with the much slower Cote and trying to put on a show for the crowd. If he gets careless against Leites, there’s a slight chance he could get submitted.

But the guys Silva has trouble with are typically the brutish wrestlers like Travis Lutter and in the first round against Dan Henderson, and Leites doesn’t seem to possess the tools to give Silva much of a fight at this point in time unless something strange happens like an injury or Silva getting overconfident and going for a flashy move at the wrong time like when Urijah Faber tried a spinning backfist on Mike Brown in the WEC and got caught.

For these reasons, Silva seems like a pretty safe bet at UFC 97 in Montreal in a main event that almost seems like a waste of time for Silva, who has publicly stated that he doesn’t want to fight too much longer. Silva should be fighting better competition at this stage of his UFC career but we’ll have to wait another three or more months to see him against a worthy opponent, and that’s not disrespect to Leites, just a testament to Silva’s abilities.