UFC 83: Rich Franklin Is Satisfied With Being Second to Anderson Silva

The single most impressive thing anyone did in the Octagon at UFC 83 last night was the way Rich Franklin spun out of a Travis Lutter arm bar. Franklin looked for a moment like he was going to have to tap out, but he worked his way out of it and had an excellent performance. He talked about beating Lutter in this video, but he also said something else that's interesting:

Franklin is possibly the second-best middleweight in UFC, but he gave a very frank, candid assessment of whether he deserves a shot at the best middleweight, champion Anderson Silva.

"I'm sure they're not going to put me in another title fight," Franklin said. "At this point, Silva's beaten me twice. So would I fight him again? Yeah. Do I see a point in it? I don't know."

That's especially refreshing considering the way Lutter disparaged Silva last week. It's nice to hear Franklin acknowledge that right now, there's Silva and there's everyone else.

Of course, that raises an interesting dilemma for UFC: What do you do when you have a fighter who's that much better than everyone else? I'd like to see Silva fight Georges St-Pierre at 180 pounds, but if that doesn't happen, Silva could be so dominant that he makes the UFC middleweight division boring.