It’s official – Anderson Silva will get an immediate rematch against Chris Weidman and it goes down at UFC 168 on December 28th.
UFC president Dana White confirmed the news on ESPN Sportscenter tonight, a week after Weidman shocked the world by knocking out the long-reigning champion become the new middleweight title holder.
Immediately after the fight Silva said that he wasn’t interested in a rematch, but he’s had a quick change of heart and in a video shown on ESPN he assures fans, “I’m back. Trust me – I’m back.”
By that he presumably means that he’s not going to be showboating with his hands down this time out after learning a costly lesson with his antics in their first meeting.
Fans are eager to know whether this was a one off, or if Weidman really does have Silva’s number and Dana White believes that interest is going to lead to blockbuster pay-per-view business for their end of year show.
“I’ll tell you this: I think this will be the biggest pay-per-view we’ve ever done,” White boldly claimed to MMAfighting.com.
To do that it would have to eclipse the reported 1.6 million buys that UFC 100 did back in the summer of 2009. That’s a very tall order indeed, but considering that a woman’s title fight between TUF 18 coaches Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate is also on the card then UFc 158 certainly looks good to break the one million barrier at least.
Check out Silva’s brief ESPN announcement below.
—
