It’s August 7th, 2010, and the culmination of one of the most memorable pre-fight build-ups in the history of the sport awaits.

UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva (28-4 MMA, 11-0 UFC) will attempt to defend his title for the seventh time as he takes on the brash American Chael Sonnen (26-10-1 MMA, 4-3 UFC).

A win for Silva would see him surpass Royce Gracie’s all-time UFC record of eleven consecutive wins, as well as equaling Matt Hughes’ all-time record of seven successful UFC title defenses.

Let’s take a look at the last three results of the two men headlining the event:

Silva sandwiched a spectacular first-round knockout over former UFC light-heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin in between decision victories over Brazilian pair Thales Leites and Demian Maia.

UFC President Dana White described Silva’s playful performance against Maia at UFC 112 as ‘disgusting’ and ‘an embarrassment to the sport.’

Sonnen has won his last three fights, against Dan Miller, Yushin Okami, and Nate Marquardt, all by way of a three-round unanimous decision.

It will be interesting to see how Sonnen, who has never seen beyond the third round in his 37-fight professional career, fares if this contest does go to the championship rounds.

Here’s a look at how these two fighters fared when competing against common opponents shared throughout their careers. On the left of the graphic, you’ll see how Silva fared against any shared opponents and on the right, you’ll see Sonnen’s results against the same men.

The two men share six common opponents; Demian Maia, Forrest Griffin, Nate Marquardt, Yushin Okami, Jeremy Horn, and Alex Stiebling.

Silva scored aforementioned victories against Maia and Griffin- two opponents who hold first-round submission wins over Sonnen.

Both men notched wins against Marquardt, whilst Silva suffered a DQ defeat against Okami- an opponent Sonnen beat via unanimous decision.

Silva scored victories against both Horn and Stiebling, and whilst Sonnen did notch a decision win against ‘The Brazillian Killa,’ he has came up short against Horn three times, with the contest finishing inside the distance on each occasion.

The Dwyer Score Each event, I calculate a ‘Dwyer Score’ for the card. It essentially gives a numeric value to the momentum of fighters competing at any one event. I do this by assigning a figure to each fighter’s current streak; a fighter on a five-fight winning streak contributes +5 to an event’s score, whilst a fighter on a two-fight losing streak contributes -2 to the score. Only UFC results are considered and a fighter coming off a no-contest, a draw, or a bout with another promotion has a streak of 0. When you tally up the scores for every fighter on a card, you get a total for the event- the ‘Dwyer Score.’ This score does not claim to predict or measure the quality or excitement of any one card, but it does give you an idea of the general momentum of fighters heading into a specific event. The graphic to the above-right displays some of the highest-scoring events of all time, to help give some context to this score. UFC 117: Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen posts a huge score of +36, the highest score in the UFC’s 157-event history, surpassing the record that was set by UFC 111 (Georges St-Pierre vs. Dan Hardy) in March. Here’s a look at how this score compares to other events’ scores over the past year: