Herring would have taken a tremendous beating. As for the Silva fight, Silva can barely pull himself off of the mat after that round. He may have expended all of his energy, he was never known as a cardio machine and maybe his TRT was wearing off. Who knows but to have been caught in the full mount against a monster like that and survived is saying something, other than he should have never been there to begin with. However, 3 of the guys that beat Fedor have or may have done so on the sauce. Henderson and Silva were never the same after taking away their TRT and we will see what happens with Werdum.
Look, I have a great amount of respect for Fedor and what he has done for the sport. I am a big fan of how he conducts himself in and out of the ring but I know that all fighters have their peaks and declines. I think, for Fedor, what happened is that their was such a hype, deserved hype, that followed him into the new era of MMA marketing as the greatest ever and your new fans and casuals looked at this short chubby guy who looks like an appliance repairman and said "no way". He fights a few times in this era and wins, Arlovski, Sylvia, Rogers, and the new crowd is still on the fence. Werdum, Henderson and Silva come along and all of a sudden, he is a can. If you didn't watch the 10 years before those fights, it is easy to say that. Had Pride had the following in the US that the UFC does or the marketing Fedor would have been considered the greatest the world over. Had he been accomplishing the same thing in the UFC during those years, Dana would have been heralding him as the greatest ever, as well. Remember, the 10 years that Fedor was dominant in other orgs, the UFC had Wes Simms, Paul Buentello, Asuerio Silva and Jeff Monson all challenging Sylvia, Arlovski and Mir for the #1 spot in the UFC. Later in that run, the only fight that I wanted to see was Fedor vs. Lesnar but then Lesnar got exposed by Velasquez and Overeem and Fedor had his imminent decline. It happens to all fighters but that would have been one hell of a staredown before the fight.