Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva: How Weidman Killed the 'King' at UFC 162

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UFC 162 brought one of the greatest surprises in recent UFC history as the relatively inexperienced Chris Weidman knocked out the great Anderson Silva. Weidman has just nine fights to his name going into the middleweight title bout, and had been absent from the sport for a year (a quarter of his total career) due to injury.
Here's the GIF of the knockout. You're going to want to keep that open.
Unfortunately, Weidman has been robbed of some of the glory that he deserves. Many fans and journalists are claiming his KO to be more a case of Silva losing the fight for himself rather than Weidman taking the title from him. 
But was that really the case? 
Weidman won the first round in fairly convincing fashion as he took down the champion, landed good punches and attacked with a kneebar and heel hook. Once the fight returned to the feet, Anderson Silva went to his showboating and looked to convince the judges that he was winning the round based on his confidence and bravado.
Sadly, MMA is the kind of sport wherein judges can be fooled into thinking that showboating actually means something. Some fans are certainly still convinced Silva won the first round.

Silva's limbo dancing is part of his game.
In the second round, it was more of Silva going about his usual antics and waiting for Weidman to overextend himself. The challenger did a wonderful job of continually moving into good striking range rather than lunging in at Anderson's bait. His jabs landed successfully through Silva's razzle-dazzle, and that had to irritate the champion.
I spoke in my "Killing the King" series about how Anderson rolls with or pulls away from punches and how his opponents in MMA make it a lot easier for him by never leaving the left-right-left punching pattern:

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In MMA, this [rolling with strikes] should be easier than in boxing because almost all MMA fighters attack by alternating their hands—left-right-left or vice versa.
Boxers often double or even triple up the same hand mid-combination, which makes it difficult for the defender to turn side to side as Silva does.
Very few opponents have doubled up punches from one hand against Silva. I am not saying that doubling up would allow a fighter to knock Silva out—there isn't a simple answer to an iron chin. However, there is a reason why elite boxers rarely roll with every punch as effectively as Silva does; boxers are not as predictable and one-note in their offense.

Of course, I had no idea that Chris Weidman would be the man to try this and even less of a clue that it would end in a knockout for a fighter whose chances most of us were pretty pessimistic about.

Weidman's success in throwing Silva off his game and catching the champion off balance before finishing him on the ground was largely due to his doubling up off his right hand.

Muhammad Ali draws Sonny Liston out and catches him reaching.
Leaning straight back away from punches at the waist is a technical taboo in boxing. It opens up some lovely counters if you can convince an opponent to lunge at you—see Silva over Forrest Griffin or Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston (which I wrote about here)—but if you get hit while bending backward at the waist, absorbing the force of the blow could end badly.  
A fantastic example of both the risks and rewards of pulling straight back from punches can be seen in Prince Naseem Hamed's bout with Kevin Kelley. Hamed was dropped multiple times as he was hit while trying to lean back, but equally, Hamed's own knockout punch came off one of these awkward backward leans which made Kelley overcommit.

Fans can complain about Silva leaning back with his hands low all day because it cost him the fight, but it has also won him numerous fights in his incredible win streak. It is difficult to lean as far back, or as freely, with one's hands up—try performing limbo while holding your fists to your chin for a lesson in human balance.
Anderson loves to draw fighters in by making their strikes fall just short.

Silva loads up the short right hook while leaning back against Belfort.
Plenty of elite fighters in boxing, kickboxing and MMA have pulled away from strikes, as Silva does, and have become known as crafty fighters for their chosen style; Ali and Prince Naseem are a couple of great examples from the boxing world.
Unfortunately, most who do pull away from punches eventually get hit while they are doing so, which is far worse than getting hit while leaning backward in a stance with some semblance of a guard.
A great example of the problem faced in Silva's leaning away from punches at the waist can be seen in Sugar Ray Robinson's autobiography, Sugar Ray, in which he details preparing to fight the incredibly awkward and savvy Randy Turpin, who had bested Robinson for his title in their first meeting.
Recounting how Turpin pulled directly back from strikes, Robinson remembers that an old adviser, Soldier Jones, counselled him to "feint Turpin into yanking his head back...because then he can't yank it back no more." 
After apparently being headbutted in their second meeting, Robinson began to worry that the fight could be called off as a technical knockout in favour of Turpin. Robinson reminisced, "In my desperation, I feinted Turpin into retreat with my left jab, as I had done to my sparring partners. When he yanked his head back, I let go a right hand to the face."

Turpin was awkward, but nowhere near as active in his backward leans as Anderson Silva is. The truth of the knockout is pretty simple: Weidman's double right hand caused Silva to lean back as far as he could before the left hook was released.
Watch Silva's fights with Stephan Bonnar, Vitor Belfort or any other who chose to strike with him. It was predictable left-right-left combinations from start until finish (whether that be a minute in or 25 minutes later). Anderson is so used to evading basic combinations that they just won't work.
Reaching to hit Silva—as Forrest famously did—is just asking to meet a counterpunch as your strikes fall short.
What Weidman did was to stay in range at all times while getting Silva to lean back. As the second, short right hand came (with nothing on it), Anderson pulled back just as he normally does for the left hook, leaving him with nowhere to go, bent over backward and unable to move his feet as Weidman's left hook sailed in.
The thing which most people won't understand is the importance of the powerless backhand in the middle of the combination.
So often in combat sports, it is the minor punches which are more important than the major ones. Had Weidman not gotten Silva to pull his head back with the slappy second right hand, the left hook would have sailed right past by an inch or two, and we would all still be talking about Silva's reflexes.

Silva leans back from the first right straight.

Silva leans back again as Chris Weidman slaps a back-handed second right at him. Silva's head is now well behind his centre of gravity.

Silva has nowhere left to go as the left hook comes in.
As it happened, the first time that Weidman used the double right hand to place himself in range for the left hook, it worked. Had the fight continued, I have little doubt that Weidman would have continued to work his way in and fake Silva into overcommitting to a backward lean. 
A similar effect can, of course, be accomplished by doubling up the jab

continued...

I'm not really sure what opinion is being argued against here. I can't speak for anyone else, but my feeling isn't that Silva got KO'd because he dropped his hands and leaned back. The author here does a good job of pointing out why that works and how Silva uses it to his benefit, but he conveniently words it a certain way and omits some important info.
 
Silva didn't get KO'd simply because he was leaning back with his hands down. He got KO'd because he was clowning.
 
Anybody who knows anything about striking knows that the correct stance to minimize the chance of getting KO'd in a fight is to keep your shoulders high and your chin down low and tight. See the classic Muay Thai stance, for example:
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The primary taunt that Silva was doing in this fight was doing this cartoon-parody of being hurt by a punch. He would drop his shoulders and kind of waggle them in a goofy way and lean his head back with his chin straight out. He does it at least twice just in the gif provided in that article. That is the exact opposite of proper technique to avoid a KO punch, and Silva did it purposely multiple times in this fight. Watch any gif, video, or picture and it is clear as day.
 
So yes; the author is correct that Silva does in fact lean back as a technique, and Weidman hit him while he was doing so. But the actual reason why the punch had the effect that it did was due entirely to Silva's clowning antics.

I showed this to my buddy at work and his response was "You guys think too much".

 

lol maybe... maybe...

I think I agree with your buddy Trigger...haha...I don't think there was really any sort of specific "lean" or specialized "technique" that requires watching multiple clips of boxers analyzing their angles of lean and how they were punched and KO'd. It's really simple, something comes at you, you "lean" out of the way, if something else comes at you very fast once you've "leaned"...hence making your "lean" null and void, then that "something else" will hit you...therefore increasing the chances of the victim being KO'd. There...is that technical enough?

Yeah that's pretty much what Chrom's post was saying. I agree with that, but I'm saying that happened plus Silva willfully put himself into the worst possible defensive position by clowning and doing his little shoulder-shimmy with his chin up in the air when Weidman connected.

Perfect storm.