GLENDALE, Arizona – Anderson Silva simply refused to taint what he respectfully felt was the seminal moment of Jake Paul’s brief boxing career.

Asked repeatedly during his post-fight press conference about the scoring of their eight-round cruiserweight fight, Silva accepted defeat and praised Paul. Silva lost six rounds apiece on two scorecards (78-73, 78-73) and five rounds on the other card (77-74), despite that CompuBox’s unofficial statistics suggest that their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event was more competitive than that.

Before Silva arrived at their press conference in the bowels of Desert Diamond Arena, an equally respectful Paul (6-0, 4 KOs) stated that he felt he won six rounds to two. His knockdown of Silva early in the eighth round convinced Paul that he “had it in the bag” before ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. revealed the official scores.

The 47-year-old Silva didn’t dispute Paul’s version of what happened. Silva (3-2, 2 KOs) would welcome a rematch, but the beloved Brazilian southpaw didn’t want to take away from the undefeated Paul’s triumph.

“I think it’s very important that people respect Jake’s moment now,” Silva said. “I’m a black samurai, you know? I know I lost. I know I failed in my whole strategy. And my opponent [won], and I need to respect that. I’m not the same [as] the other guys [that] fight with Jake. You know, ‘I need revenge. I need a rematch.’ I don’t know. Let’s go see what happen, you know? And maybe. I don’t know.”

Silva lamented his strategic failure more than anything, especially the poor positioning that led to Paul dropping him with a right hand to the center of Silva’s face approximately 30 seconds into the final round.

“I fail in the strategy, you know, and the last round Jake [landed] the good punch,” Silva said. “You know, and my base is not correct. You know, that’s what my coach say, my base is not correct and that’s [why] I take the punch. But I don’t feel [a] knockout [coming]. I don’t feel power [from Paul], but I’m not in good balance. And that’s [why] I take the punch.

“Of course, I have more experience and I doing this a lot, and this happened with me again, one more time, you know. The last time it happened to me when I fight with Uriah Hall. I failed two times in that situation, and that time I just talked to my coach. ‘I don’t believe it because I training hard for don’t do the same stupid position,’ you know? But I’m human. I’m [a] superhero, but sometimes my half-human fails.”

CompuBox’s unofficial punch stats showed that their fight was very competitive.

CompuBox credited Paul for connecting on only four more punches overall than Silva (83-of-336 to 79-of-251). According to CompuBox, Silva landed more power punches (66-of-176 to 51-of-121) and Paul landed more jabs (32-of-215 to 13-of-75).

Silva nevertheless took the high road in defeat.

“Jake is better than me today because I tried to [implement] my game inside and my whole strategy,” Silva said. “And that’s [what] I talked to my coach [about] in the room. I don’t found my distance and I fail in my strategy and Jake’s better than me today. That’s it.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.