Anderson Silva is one of the greatest fighters to ever set foot in the cage and his son Kalyl has been following in his footsteps, but with significantly less BJJ. Silva was always known as a striker first and foremost, but he was also a BJJ black belt who managed to register a few submission wins against elite opponents throughout his career. Silva’s first introduction to martial arts actually came with Jiu-Jitsu, but he discovered striking arts like Taekwondo and Muay Thai during his teenage years and quickly found that he had a talent for them.
His son, Kalyl Silva, has already started his own journey through the world of combat sports, but he’s doing things just a little bit differently from his father. Naturally his introduction to martial arts has come a lot sooner and been a lot closer to home than it was for his father before him, but he’s chosen to pursue the competitive side in a different way. Silva actually started out with MMA at the age of 22 and although he took some boxing fights at the same time, he was focused on MMA and quickly became a popular fighter in PRIDE before moving over to the UFC and beginning the title-reign that made him a household name.
It wasn’t until his retirement from professional MMA in 2020 that Silva chose to return to boxing competition, amassing a 2-1 record since then. He hasn’t shut the door on grappling entirely though, as he also revealed that he was preparing to compete in a BJJ tournament in Dubai at some point in the future. While Kalyl Silva is just as interested in combat sports as Anderson was, he’s chosen to forgo BJJ in his competitive career and focus on striking alone. At the age of 24, he’s put together a 2-1 kickboxing record and recently made his professional boxing debut, knocking out his opponent in just 93 seconds.
The footage of Anderson Silva doing BJJ with his son Kalyl was uploaded to the official Instagram account of Kalyl Silva:
