LAS VEGAS – Months of work, hours of poring over film, long days of torturing his body, preparing for the biggest fight of his life, was rendered useless in 15 seconds.

Antonio Silva was down on his back and split open by a Cain Velasquez elbow between the eyes that instantly began gushing blood.

When the fight was stopped three minutes, 36 seconds after it began with Velasquez the one-sided winner, Silva looked as if a madman had hacked him in the face with a meat cleaver.

It wasn't the cut, or the blood, or the pain from the punches and elbows that Velasquez pummeled him with that bothered Silva so much. He knew what he was in for when he signed the contract for the fight.

What he didn't expect, though, was that only seconds after the bell sounded, against arguably the greatest heavyweight in the world, he'd be essentially blind and unable to see shots coming at him.

Velasquez is a fearsome opponent for any man, let alone one whose sight is not just blurred but almost entirely gone. That, though, was the situation Silva was in during his UFC debut against Velasquez almost exactly one year ago.

"You're almost helpless when you can't [see]," Silva said.

There was so much blood that Velasquez looked as if he'd been sprayed with a hose with it. He was in Silva's guard virtually the entire fight and every punch, every elbow, splattered blood all over his body.

By the time it was over, it looked like a scene from an Abdullah the Butcher versus The Original Sheik pro wrestling match.

A year later, Silva will meet Velasquez again, this time on Saturday in the main event of UFC 160 with the heavyweight belt on the line at the MGM Grand Garden.

[Related: Junior dos Santos: Fighting is worth the health risks ]

It's remarkable that Silva, left battered, beaten and bloodied in one of the most brutal bouts in UFC history, is back and on the verge of the championship.

Junior dos Santos, the former UFC heavyweight champion and Silva's close friend, never doubted his buddy. At a luncheon a few months ago, Silva was asked about the improbability of getting the rematch so quickly. Before Silva could formulate an answer, dos Santos jumped in.

"He is a real fighter and I knew that one way or another, he would find a way to get back," dos Santos said.

Silva did it by scoring back-to-back upsets. He first beat Travis Browne in a bout that was essentially designed to be a springboard toward stardom and title contention for Browne.

But Silva, whose nickname "Bigfoot" ought to be changed to "Big Hands" because his fists are the size of canned hams, blasted Browne with a crushing right, then finished him with a series of lefts.

Then came the grudge fight against Alistair Overeem at UFC 156 in February. Overeem all but mocked Silva in the build-up to the fight and promised a dominant win.

But after dropping the first two rounds, Silva exploded in the third and knocked out Overeem. Improbably, in less than a year, he was back in the title picture.

Even in the darkest times in the moments after the fight with Velasquez, Silva never lost the belief that he could do something special in the fight game.

"I made a mistake [against Velasquez]," he said. "I made a big mistake. It's not good to throw a low kick against a wrestler. I had nerves and I didn't stick to the plan that I had worked on. But he took me down and cut me and I couldn't see, right in the first 30 seconds of the bout.

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