Who UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva should fight next is the subject of great debate in MMA circles, but apparently as far as the fighter’s manager is concerned there is only one fighter that fits the bill.
“No opponent makes sense for Anderson at this moment. Unless we do a catchweight against Georges St. Pierre,” Silva’s adviser Jorge Guimaraes told the TATAME site.
“They didn’t offer the fight, but he’s the only one that could do a super fight. Anderson has the biggest paycheck in the UFC, and you can’t promote an event with these amateur kids that are coming up now”.
No doubt the likes of Chris Weidman, Tim Boetsch, Alan Belcher and Michael Bisping will be thrilled to hear themselves being branded in such a way!
It does leave the UFC with something of a dilemma though. Realistically a fight with GSP isn’t going to happen any time soon. He’s currently rehabilitating after knee surgery and if all goes well he’ll face interim welterweight champ Carlos Condit in November.
A move up to fight Silva after that can’t be completely ruled out, but assuming that St.Pierre wins I suspect he may be tempted to stick around at 170lbs to potentially fight Nick Diaz next year.
Even if he did agree to the ‘superfight’ the Canadian has said before that he’d want to take a considerable amount of time off to increase his weight in order to be competitive in the middleweight division, so Silva could potentially be waiting around until sometime in 2013 before his next fight.
I still think the good solution would be for Rashad Evans to commit to moving down to 185lbs to take on Silva in the mean time, while Weidman perhaps takes on the winner of September’s Bisping Vs Stann fight in the hopes of establishing himself as the clear No.1 contender in the division.
Otherwise, if Silva and his advisers are going to continue to complain about the lack of real challenges in the middleweight division, the surely time for him to move up to light-heavyweight.
