LAS VEGAS – It wasn't James Irvin's night on any front.
As the Sacramento native and fallen UFC underdog entered the Palms Casino elevator with a small contingent in tow late Saturday night, he realized one problem. He had lost his room key.
Off to the front desk it was, with Irvin and his freshly stitched right eye posing for pictures and signing autographs along the way and eventually entering his room. Yet in a fight that could have opened doors never before imagined, Irvin was knocked out by Anderson Silva just 1 minute, 1 second into the action at the Pearl Theatre.
Silva (23-4), widely considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in mixed martial arts, caught a right leg kick from Irvin and landed a right-handed punch that put Irvin on his back. The middleweight fight was called some 10 punches later, but Irvin said it was over in his mind after the initial blow.
"It was a flash knockout, because I didn't know what hit me after that," the Del Oro High School product, 29, said while sitting on the couch of his hotel room. "Even waking up, I was covered in blood. He got me right on the money tonight."
And the fans got their money's worth. With a star-studded capacity crowd of 2,100 on hand that included the resident casino owners and Kings co-owners Joe and Gavin Maloof, numerous members of the Kings team, singer Usher and actor Jamie Foxx, Irvin was unable to shock the fans and the oddsmakers who had Silva as an overwhelming favorite. Silva, after all, was the one with the belt and the confidence to take his act up a division that was 20 pounds higher.
UFC Commissioner Dana White had scheduled the fight on short notice after a debut pay-per-view event put on by a competing association, Affliction, was scheduled in Anaheim for the same night. So Silva obliged, as did Irvin for the fight that was carried by the cable channel Spike.
Silva, a Brazilian who uses a translator, aptly summed up his performance.
"Like in a chess game, he happened to move the wrong piece and I countered," Silva said. "I caught his mistake."
Added White: "I expected an amazing fight tonight. I thought they'd go back and forth. I thought they'd bang. Wow."
Irvin said five fighters passed up the chance to face Silva. Yet he wasn't about to miss such a monumental chance to shock the fighting world. It wasn't easy even before the fight, though.
Irvin (14-5) was coming off of a UFC-record eight-second knockout of Alexander Houston in his previous fight. He said this was his first main event. The spotlight, not to mention the opponent, was harder to deal with than ever.
"It was a big mental thing going through this all week," Irvin said. "I didn't realize how much interviewing you have to do. There was one day I think I woke up to like 15 calls, had eight throughout the day, just crazy amounts of camera time.
"I had cameras in my face earlier in the day, and I had to re-walk from the elevator to the dressing room so they could get (the camera shot) right. And I'm getting ready to fight the baddest guy on earth."
The gamble, quite simply, didn't pay off.
"I don't think I'll have another (chance) as big as this," Irvin said.
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