Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva spoke with the media yesterday in Los Angeles as part of a seven-day, seven-city media tour to promote the year-end UFC 168 card — which he headlines in a rematch against current UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman — and “The Spider” had a number of interesting comments to make on a variety of topics.
- When asked how he got knocked out by a fighter with less than 10 pro fights, Silva said that Weidman “got lucky.” He said that the beautiful combination that Weidman threw to finish their historic fight at UFC 162 was essentially a fluke and that it wasn’t “The All-American’s” crisp boxing skills that got the job done for him.
- He also said that he plans on not training any differently for this upcoming training camp other than working on more Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
- As well, Silva said that since UFC 162 he has been very busy working on some projects outside of the MMA cage. He also said he plans on partnering with Zuffa on owning one of the new UFC Gyms.
- Silva said he has nine fights left on a 10-fight contract he signed before the Weidman fight, and he said he expects to fulfill every single bout on the deal.
- The former champ said that his “dream” fight is a boxing match with Roy Jones Jr. We have heard Silva say many times that this is a fight he is after, but since he was the UFC middleweight champ for such a long time the UFC never had the ability to promote him in a boxing match. Although UFC president Dana White has always been against promoting boxing on his MMA cards, if this is the fight that Silva truly wants, don’t be surprised if White finds a way to make it happen before Silva’s incredible combat sports career is over.
It’s very rare for Silva to speak in English for a prolonged period of time, so to hear all these things coming out of his mouth and not out of the mouth of his manager Ed Soares was nice for a change. However, even though it was kind of funny to hear him say it, I disagree with Silva that the KO blow was a fluke. Now, I’m not saying that he’s going to get knocked out again in the rematch — I have no idea what’s going to happen there, to be honest — but to say Weidman got lucky when he threw an amazing four-punch combination that tricked Silva into moving his head the wrong way doesn’t give his opponent the credit he deserves. But then again, these two are probably playing head games with one another, so you have to take some of what they say on this media tour with a grain of salt. Regardless, the top-two middleweights in the world will fight this December at UFC 168 and, if the first fight was any indication, fight fans may be in for a shock yet again.