Wondering how this conversation was brought up last night at the UFC 156 post fight presser?
Well believe it or not, Rashad Evans was being considered for the next shot at Silva upon beating Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in the co-main event.
As the night of upsets saw big names like Jacob Volkmann, Alistair Overeem, and Jon Fitch dropping lop sided losses, so did Evans.
Now the question of who’s next for Anderson Silva has been whittled all the way down to one man who was considered a top contender for the middleweight belt at one point, but has been sidelined by shoulder injury since pulling out of his fight with fellow top contender at the time, Tim Boetsch.
When a reporter asked Dana White about his thoughts on the middle weight title picture, it’s safe to say no one was surprised with what came next. “We’re thinking about the summer,” said Dana. “Looks like Weidman, as long as Weidman’s healthy, you know, that’s probably the fight we’ll make.”
Here’s the kicker, since Weidman 9-0 (MMA) 5-0 (UFC) has been out on injury since late last year, nearly every single top contender has been eliminated from the title picture in his weight class. Boetsch dropped a TKO loss to Weidman’s replacement in Costa Philippou, Michael Bisping was TKO’d by Vitor Belfort, Alan Belcher lost to Yushin Okami, and everyone else in the division is either scrambling to put a couple wins together, or still reeling from losses to The Spider in previous title fights of their own.
Belfort might be 3-0 in the division, but an up-kick loss to the champ will be difficult to overlook when trying to sell the fans and Silva’s camp the idea of a rematch. Other’s like Hector Lombard and Philippou will probably be moving closer to top five contender status of their own soon if they win a few more, but that’s still assuming they can stay consistently in the win column, which apparently is asking too much from anyone else in their division of late.
Now with Anderson wanting a fight in April (according to Dana White), and Weidman injured until approximately the summer, this fight may be closer to being signed than people realize, but don’t get to excited just yet.
“We don’t know when he’s gonna come back,” said Dana. “We gotta find a fight first, we gotta make the fight, we gotta make sure Weidman’s alright. The later the better for Weidman probably.”
Looking at Anderson Silva’s last bunch of title defenses, it’s been a while since he’s fought a clear number one contender in his division. His last fight against a light-heavyweight ‘has been’ in Stephan Bonner was hardly worth getting off the couch for. Sure his rivalry with Chael Sonnen was entertaining, but far from a legitimate representation on what the middle weights had to offer.
Weidman is undefeated, defeated some of the best in the division himself by beating Damien Maia, and TKO’ing Mark Munoz, and interestingly enough, he’s ready to come off a serious injury to take a crack at defeating arguably the most dangerous fighter to ever walk the planet, in his prime.
Since stepping in to fight Alessio Sakara and Maia on short notice and still pulling out a victory, he’s easily one of the most skilled fighters in his division. In fact Weidman has enjoyed saying that when he’s been given a full training camp, he’s finished all his opponents. I believe he will do the same against Anderson Silva.
“Dude, not only does he want to come back and fight the best of all time, he said, ‘I’ll smash this guy, I’ll fight him in Brazil and I’ll give him the rematch in Madison Square Garden.’ So he’s pretty confident with that fight,” said Dana.
Follow every UFC fight in Weidman’s career in the video below that has lead him to a perfect 9-0 (MMA) 5-0 (UFC) record.
Video courtesy of YouTube uploader XD18Felipe