Former UFC champion, Anderson Silva, hasn’t even won his fight against Tito Ortiz yet and he’s already thinking about his next opponent. While speaking on MMA Fighting’s new Portuguese-language podcast Trocação Franca, Silva dropped a big name which has MMA fans foaming at the mouth with excitement.
The great, Georges St-Pierre.
“It’s a possibility,” Silva said. “Georges St-Pierre is a guy that deserves all respect. Not only him, but all fighters. Vitor [Belfort], Tito [Ortiz], [Oscar] De La Hoya — they are legends. And I think it would be an interesting fight, but we need the almighty to stop being annoying and let the guy move on.”
“The almighty” Silva is referring to is UFC president Dana White who still has the power to block St-Pierre from fighting outside of the UFC, even though St-Pierre is officially retired. Those pesky contracts can come back to haunt fighters.
We know this to be the case because St-Pierre himself said that White blocked him from fighting Oscar De La Hoya.
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“At first he says to me that the reason why he did not want it is because he thought that Oscar would basically destroy me in a boxing match,” St-Pierre said on The MMA Hour. “And I had some good arguments — I told him that I believe Oscar has more mileage than I do, he’s no longer in his prime, I stayed busy the whole time, I’m still in great shape, I’m going to be very well prepared and I’m taking this fight very seriously. If I do it, because it’s my name — my image is attached to it — I will do it 100 percent. And I told Dana, I said, ‘If there’s one MMA fighter that go to boxing and look good in this situation, it would be me.’
“And at first he refused,” St-Pierre continued. “Then he thought about it but he came back with the argument that, oh, no, it’s not because he thinks Oscar is going to win; he thinks it’s because he doesn’t like the fact that Triller takes me and makes money off my back while I’m still under contract with UFC. So what Dana says — listen to this — then he came back and he asked me if I wanted to fight Khabib [Nurmagomedov]. And I told Dana, I said, ‘That’s very strange. Why didn’t you want to do the fight when we asked you a few years ago? Why is it now?’ He said, ‘Yeah, because Khabib was not retired and he was not the same guy that he was. Now it all makes sense.’ So I didn’t want to, but I was curious to see what would’ve happened, so I said to him, ‘I’m going to think about it,’ and I waited.”
Perhaps a fight between two former UFC champions in a boxing right would be something White would consider, if not attached to the Triller promotion. The fight is a longshot at best and who knows if it’s a fight St-Pierre would come out of retirement for.
Unfortunately, the fans may never get this fight … again.
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