Anderson Silva goes off on UFC in tirade
Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva has been making MMA headlines this week for rather interesting reasons. After snapping a losing streak by defeating Derek Brunson earlier this year, Silva recently called for the UFC to form an interim middleweight title while UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping prepares to fight former welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre in his highly anticipated return to the UFC later this year.
Anderson Silva, like many other UFC middleweights, feels as though the middleweight division is being help up by a potential Bisping vs. St-Pierre scrap, and as a result, would like to see the promotion form an interim middleweight title while Bisping and St-Pierre settle their feud for the undisputed title. Silva took things one step further as he stated that if the UFC didn’t create an interim belt, he would retire.
UFC president Dana White didn’t like that too much, and suggeted that Silva retire if he was thinking about potentially doing so.
Silva followed that up by a tirade on a live stream:
“When you’re right, you have to go all the way,” Silva said in an Instagram live stream later Tuesday (via Combate). “I’m sorry if this costs my leaving the UFC, retiring, being sidelined. (If) they want to mess with me, I don’t care. But what I’m doing is the right thing. It’s the right thing for me.”
“There’s a lockout against the division’s athletes,” Silva said. “It’s not that I’m pissy, because I won’t fight for the belt. I had the belt for 10 years. Nothing in this sport is new to me. But, for my business, there’s no reason for me to take a fight with Romero that isn’t for the interim belt. There’s no reason.
“I’m not an idiot, I’m not stupid. I want people to understand that, that they stop talking crap, because they don’t understand what happens behind the scenes in this sport.”
on 5/10/2017.
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Anderson Silva
