Recently Anderson Silva began to warm up ever so slightly to idea of a superfight with Jon Jones, and now we’ve had just the slightest glimmer of hope from the light-heavyweight champion himself that this blockbuster showdown could one day happen.
“I respect [Silva] a lot,” Jones says to Correio Braziliense in an interview. “As I said several times, I do not want to be the guy who beat Anderson, and do not want to be the guy who lost to him. Anderson is a great champion, I’m a great champion. We both…” At that point Jones trailed off, before picking back up. “I don’t know. I don’t know.
“I’m not saying that the fight will not happen. It can happen. But it’s not something I’m chasing. I don’t believe that I need to fight with Anderson to be the best in the world.”
Alright, so it’s not like Jones is jumping up and down with excitement about the prospect – and neither is Silva to be fair – but even the fact that both men are even willing to entertain the thought of the fight becoming a reality is a big step in the right direction compared to what we’ve heard from them in the past.
Dana White has made it clear that this is the fight he would like to see, and he believes that the two men can be talked into it, and perhaps he’s right.
On the other hand, a fight that looked much more likely between Silva and Georges St.Pierre is still anything but certain to take place. Despite rumblings from GSP’s camp earlier in the year that the Canadian star wanted the fight, he’s now saying that it hasn’t even crossed his mind.
“I hate that,” GSP tells ESPN regarding the constant talk of him fighting Silva. “They talk to me about the next fight and I’m not there. Like I’m supposed to win easy, like it’s a joke. Carlos Condit is a dangerous guy. I always respect my opponent. My life is on the line.
“I haven’t thought about it. I know [Silva’s] a big guy. I have to sit down and analyse it.”
It is unfair to ask him at this moment in time – he’s coming back from a long spell out recovering from serious knee surgery so his focus has to be solely on his upcoming fight with Condit. At the same time, I’ve yet to see an interview with GSP over the years in which he’s appeared enthusiastic about the prospect of a superfight with Silva.
So it’s still all up in the air at the moment, but with there being so much talk about these fights, if at least one of them doesn’t finally come to fruition in 2013 then it’s going to be a major disappointment for both the fans and the UFC.
