Steven Seagal Helped Anderson Silva Learn The Front Kick That Defeated Vitor Belfort

Many in the MMA community have seen the videos of martial arts movie actor Steven Seagal working with both Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida in preparation for upcoming bouts.  It has been a source of, well, let’s say bewilderment to some.  But then came the Silva front kick that ended Vitor Belfort‘s night at ufc 126.  Most combat sports fans and practitioners could not remember a time when they saw such a move knock someone out, which of course compelled questions later.  And at the post-fight press conference, “The Spider” shed some light on the work he and Seagal had been putting in together in light of this.

“Steven Seagal helped me perfect that kick. That was a kick we were working on before I stepped in,” Silva said through a translator.

Later, MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani asked Seagal where he had learned the kick that helped Silva retain his title.  Seagal noted that he learned “sort of a variation of that (the front kick to the face) in Japan probably thirty, forty years ago, and I’ve been perfecting it all these years.  It’s not exactly karate, just something that I created that’s a little bit different that I thought Anderson can learn well because he’s sort of a natural born athlete.  He has very quick hands and feet, and his kicks are good to begin with.  So I started teaching kicks that I thought he could really hurt people with, and  in practice he was knocking people out with body shots.  At that point, I knew he was really going to make these kicks work.”

Seagal further expanded on things when asked if he had ever seen a kick like that in combat sports knock someone out before.

“Well, nobody knows the kick,” he said. “I’m teaching it to Machida….we really haven’t used it much yet; I haven’t shown it to many people yet.”

It’s pretty clear that Seagal considers Silva a friend, noting that he and “Lyoto Machida are two of my favorite guys.”  Further, it was obvious that he was really happy following Silva’s decisive victory. 

“I was really proud of him and really happy.  He did really well.”

In the end, the fact that Seagal helped Silva learn that kick will be surprising to many.  Regardless, it certainly is a feather in the actor’s cap.  One of the interesting things you can take out of it is that Silva as a whole respects the traditional martial arts and believes he can still learn useful things from them.  Interesting stuff.