Anderson Silva was supposed to be boxing his old rival Chris Weidman on the undercard of next month’s Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua event on Netflix, but he’ll now be facing another former UFC champion instead.

Weidman is reportedly out of the fight due to an injury and so now former UFC welterweight champion Tyrone Woodley has agreed to fight Silva instead on December 19th in Miami, Florida.

The 50-year-old Silva’s long title reign in the UFC’s middleweight division was just months away from being abruptly ended by the aforementioned Weidman when the 43-year-old Woodley made his UFC debut back in February of 2013.

A former Strikeforce title challenger, Woodley would go on to win the UFC’s 170lb title in 2016 by KO’ing Robbie Lawler and went on to defend the belt four times against the likes of Stephen Thompson, Demian Maia and Darren Till.

However, in 2019 Woodley was beaten on the scorecards by Kamaru Usman, which would mark the beginning of a four-fight losing slump that eventually saw him leave the UFC in 2021.

That same year Woodley went on to fight Jake Paul in the boxing ring, suffering a split-decision loss, before losing their rematch at the end of the year by KO, and he hasn’t fought since.

Silva had also crashed out of the UFC just a few months before Woodley after winning just one of his last nine fights in the promotion, before he too turned his focus to boxing.

Despite his advanced years, Silva picked up wins over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Tito Ortiz in the boxing ring in 2021, but like Woodley he also came up short against Jake Paul when they fought in 2022, coming out on the wrong end of a unanimous decision verdict.

Even at 50 years old Silva still hasn’t lost the urge to fight though and so now he’ll lock horns with Woodley in the ring on this high-profile end-of-year event on Netflix.