Middleweight champion Anderson Silva outpointed Thales Leites, while Mauricio Rua stopped former light-heavyweight champ Chuck Liddell in the first round at UFC 97 on Saturday night.

Rua (18-3) beat 39-year-old Liddell (21-7) with a lunging left and finished him off with a string of hammer-fists at 4:28 before a sellout crowd at the Bell Centre.

“I’m disappointed. I had a great camp, I was in great shape,” said a visibly emotional Liddell, who has now lost four of his last five fights.

When asked if he was ready to call it quits, he was non-committal.

“I’ve got to go home and talk to everybody,” Liddell said.

“I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right tonight.”

Rua, who hadn’t looked good going 1-1 in his first two UFC fights, was instantly thrust back into the list of potential light heavyweight contenders.

“I’m happy,” said Rua. “Liddell is a legend in MMA.”

Silva (24-4) won a record ninth straight fight in the UFC, erasing the mark shared by Royce Gracie and Jon Fitch, and tied a record with his fifth successful title defense. The judges scored it 49-46, 48-47, 50-46 for Silva.

The two fighters didn’t make contact for the first minute of the match and they often went that long without mixing it up at other points in the five-round match.

But when they did make contact, Silva was clearly the better of the two. He dominated the stand-up exchanges and thwarted any submission attempts by Leites.

“Sorry. Next time I’ll give a better performance,” Silva said through his translator after the points win.

“Sometimes we can’t always come out here and give a spectacular show.”

In other PPV matches, Winnipeg’s Krzysztof Soszynski (17-8-1) gave his home-country fans the result they wanted, forcing Brian Stann (6-2) to tap out to at 3:53 of the first round of their light heavyweight bout…Heavyweight Cheick Kongo (14-4-1) took Antoni Hardonk (8-5) to the mat and dominated with his ground-and-pound skills, scoring a TKO at 2:29 in round two…Luiz Cane (10-1-1) scored a unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27. 29-28) over Steve Cantwell (7-2) in a light heavyweight match.

In the preliminary matches, Canadian Sam Stout scored a unanimous decision over Matt Wiman in a lightweight battle…Stout’s felllow Canadian Denis Kang beat Xavier Foupa-Pokam via unanimous decision in a middleweight bout…Nate Quarry beat Canada’s Jason MacDonald via first-round TKO in a middleweight match…Ed Herman scored a unanimous decision over Canadian and former middleweight contender David Loiseau…Canadian Mark Bocek submitted David Bielkheden in the first round of a lightweight match…Canada’s TJ Grant beat Ryo Chonan via split decision in a welterweight battle…Eliot Marshall beat Vinicius Magalhaes via unanimous decision in a light heavyweight match.

Phil Lowe
phil@ifight365.com