Confusion continues to reign over who MMA’s pound-for-pound best fighter Anderson Silva will fight next, and the superstar’s management team aren’t helping matters.
The one thing we know for sure is that Silva’s managers Ed Soares and Jorge Guimaraes would like to see their man up against welterweight champ Georges St.Pierre next, and certainly that’s a fight that makes sense.
However GSP’s currently got a fight with Carlos Condit at 170lbs lined up for November and after that potentially still has a grudge match fight with Nick Diaz left before he would be ready to move up in weight.
The indication is clear that Silva and his team want a big fight for the Brazilian next though, so surely the answer is for him to move up to light-heavyweight, something he’s done successfully in the past, and fight Jon Jones?
It’s a solution that Silva’s team aren’t willing to entertain.
“What is it going to do for Jones if he goes go down in weight to fight Anderson?” Soares asked MMAfighting yesterday. “If he loses it’s going to ruin him. If Anderson Silva moves up in weight and fights Jon Jones, here’s a lighter guy who’s going to take my title? C’mon dude. Anderson is fighting a much younger guy, a much bigger guy, and Jon Jones is going to be fighting a smaller guy who technically could be better than him. I can see why each guy wouldn’t want to fight. What’s the upside?”
On that note, Giumares said in a separate interview with the same site that he also couldn’t see a fight with Jones happening because, “They both have a lot to lose.”
Firstly, the fact that both men are essentially suggesting that they are shying away from the fight because they are worrying about getting beaten is disappointing to say the least from two of the top three fighters in the world.
It also begs the question, how would the stakes be any different in a fight with GSP instead? The answer is they wouldn’t, so it makes that argument regarding Silva Vs Jones invalid.
To my mind it seems like there are double standards going on here. Why is it that Silva’s camp find it ok to have GSP move up to fight a much bigger guy in Silva, yet they see no ‘upside’ to Silva doing the same against Jones.
The truth is that while Silva is a bit smaller than Jones in terms of height and reach, he’s actually got a good build for that division (6ft 2″, 77.6″ reach) and has actually been known to walk around at 220-230lbs, which isn’t that far off what ‘Bones’ is. On the other hand GSP at his heaviest doesn’t even breach the 200lb barrier, has never fought at middleweight before, and is coming off a serious ACL operation so it’s a bigger challenge for him to move up than it would be for ‘The Spider’.
Reading between the lines, my opinion is that it appears they are saying that they think that Silva can beat St.Pierre, but not Jones.
Whether that’s true or not it does look as if they are more likely to get there way here as UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta confirmed to The Times that Silva Vs GSP is the bout that’s on their own radar.
“We are very open to the idea of Anderson/GSP. If GSP beats Condit, it’s a fight we would like to make,” Fertitta confirmed.
Whether they can convince GSP to do it though is another question.
