UFC Weidman/Silva

[Eric]

I was just casually watching this at work while walking the floor.....you shall now all share in my horror.

[Julius Seeker]

Ooooooooooh!

That sucks big time. I wouldn't blame him if he retires now. He most certainly had a fantastic career, too bad it had to end in such crazy painful fashion.

[kali o.]

Ya...that's pretty fucked up. I couldn't watch the replays.

Weidman will never get a "legitimate" win over Silva.

[Zeus]

Ya...that's pretty fucked up. I couldn't watch the replays.

Weidman will never get a "legitimate" win over Silva.

They'll do a third fight to try and get him one since the first two were tainted. And they'll promote the fuck out of it to the point where I wanna kill someone, even worse than with this fight.....

[SineSwiper]

Reddit had a really good explanation of what was going on here:

This is the ending of the UFC Middleweight Championship fight between Anderson Silva (black/yellow trunks, broken leg) and Chris Weidman. It was the highly anticipated rematch to their last bout, which ended with Weidman winning by a knockout that many considered lucky, allegedly the result of Silva "clowing around" and not taking the fight seriously.

Anderson Silva is arguably the greatest mixed martial artist (formal name for the sport often called "cagefighting") of all time. Chris Weidman is the younger, newer generation fighter. Anderson Silva likes to punch and kick and Chris Weidman is known for his wrestling and submission skills (chokes, joint locks).

In the GIF, Anderson Silva is kicking Chris Weidman, but Weidman sees it coming and lifts his leg and rotates his knee. This is known as "checking a kick." The theory is that, when someone kicks you, you cannot get out of the way fast enough (kicks have long range) and you can't block them like you can against a punch (by putting your gloves in the way). Instead, people "check" the kick, a technique where you decide that if you're going to be kicked, you're going to make them feel pain too. The kicker wants to kick with his shinbone and have it land on a soft-part of their opponent's body, like the side/back of their knee or meaty part of the thigh. When you check a kick, you put a hard part of your body in the way, and the kick results in bone-on-bone contact, which is painful for both people. A secondary goal of checking a kick - and this is what happened in this fight - is to put a hard part of your body up against a weaker part of their kicking leg. In the GIF above, Weidman successfully got his knee (hard bone) up against the weaker ankle joint or lower shinbone of Silva, and in the collision Silva's bone broke in two. While this looks like a freak injury (and to be fair a broken leg is very rare), it was actually the result of Weidman perfectly checking Silva's kick and shows Weidman's skill and reaction time.

Immediately after the GIF ends, Silva rolled around on the floor in pain and the fight was stopped and declared a win for Chris Weidman. He remains the UFC Middleweight Champion and will defend his title next against Vitor Belfort. Anderson Silva's career trajectory is now unknown as this may be a career ending injury, although he is 38 and was rumoured to be retiring soon anyway.

edit: Weidman gives his own explanation of the check in the post-fight press conference.

In other words, it was "legit", and Weidman did what he was trained to do: stop those leg kicks over and over again. Sure, the leg break was unexpected, but that's a potential outcome of the strategy. Even without the leg break, it still would have hurt like a bitch and punished Silva for doing what he does best. He would have had his best weapon taken away from him, and Weidman would have dominated him afterwards.

[Flip]

It was funny how this fight, and horrific outcome, almost took a backseat to the women's fight in the media. That was a ROFL stomp match and I'm happy Rousey beat the crap out of Tate.