Tim Sylvia notched up another win last night against German heavyweight Andreas Kraniotakes in the main event of ProElite 2.
In all honesty though it was from an exciting fight with Sylvia using the cage to ‘wall and stall’ his opponent for the majority of the fight en-route to a decision victory.
Sylvia himself acknowledged later that it wasn’t a fight he was going to look back on with great fondness, but told Sherdog’s Greg Savage that it was a strategic decision.
“Obviously I want to knock people out. He was a lot tougher than I thought he was going to be. I just felt like he was throwing so many wild punches. I was trying to keep him on the end of my punches and he was throwing wild and I couldn’t get my straight punches off so I had to go into the clinch and try to work knees and elbows and stuff like that.”
Though the performance wasn’t what he’d hoped for Sylvia is now on a 6-1 run in the past two years, and for the first time during that period Sylvia cut back down to 266lbs, having previously been fighting at super-heavyweight after balooning up to over 300lbs after leaving the UFC in 2008.
Sylvia hopes that if nothing else, that commitment to getting in shape will reflect favorably on him.
“The only thing this fight did for me was to let people know that I took it seriously and got down to 265. I’m back where I belong, so the next fight from here on out is going to be 265 and I need to start putting some big wins together.”
‘The Maine-iac” was originally scheduled to fight another UFC veteran Pedro Rizzo last night before he pulled out injured, and looking forward he sees that as fighter he needs to face in order to further his career, and style wise he feels it would be a better fight for the fans.
However, fighting for the likes of ProElite isn’t where Sylvia sees himself long-term and his end-goal is still to battle his way back to the UFC.
“I don’t care about fighting for the UFC title ever again if it never happens, but I do want to get back in the UFC and I do want to fight all the fights that I think the fans want to see, the fight that I want. I want to fight Nogueira again, I want to fight Frank Mir again. I’d like to fight Brock Lesnar, you know…Alistair Overeem.
I want to fight all those guys, I think it would be great for the fans, and you know, just keep me around and let me have those great fights. I’m going to put on a show no matter what. I’m going to fight – I’m going to show up and I’m going to fight.”
At the end of the interview Sylvia went on to make a direct plea to Dana White to allow him to test himself on the sport’s biggest stage again.
“Give me a shot brother, give me a shot. We had some good times and we can have some good times again. I just want to get back in there and show the fans that I still got it.”
Sylvia and White’s relationship soured when the former champion left the promotion to take a bigger payday with the doomed Affliction organization and that’s come back to haunt him now as the UFC president continues to turn a blind eye to what he’s doing.
Slimming back down to the heavyweight limit was a step in the right direction, though in fairness it’s something he should have done long before now, but he’s going to have to put on a better show in the cage if he really wants to have a serious chance of setting foot in the Octagon again.
