Yoel Romero confirms that he will only fight Anderson Silva for interim title

Former UFC middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva is possibly be on the verge of retiring and walking away from the UFC Octagon.

An obviously upset and frustrated Silva vented his feelings to Ariel Helwani on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour, stating that he desperately wants to fight in his home country of Brazil at UFC 212.

Silva was scheduled to fight Kelvin Gastelum but the fight fell apart after Gastelum recently tested positive for marijuana.

Now without a scheduled fight, Silva went on the MMA Hour to campaign for an interim title fight against current #1 UFC ranked middleweight Yoel Romero. Silva expressed that it is a fight that he is very interested in, but said that he and Romero’s team agreed that it is not a fight worth taking if it does not hold any sort of interim title implications.

“I say, ‘OK, I go fight Yoel Romero,’” Silva said (transcribed by Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting). “Because I know I respect Yoel Romero, he’s a great fighter. He’s No. 1 in the ranks. But one thing — why Yoel Romero come to Brazil for fight me for nothing?”

Romero called in during the show and confirmed that he was on the same page as “The Spider.”

“I fight only with Anderson for the interim belt,” Romero said over the phone. “If not for him, I wait for my time for the belt.”

Silva stated that he just wants to give his fans in Brazil what they spent their hard-earned money on, which a UFC card in Rio de Janeiro that he is fighting on.

“I stayed here for a long time for training,” Silva said. “This is not my fault for Gastelum to go out of the fight. This is not my problem. My problem is training hard for fight in Brazil for my fans. What happens to my fans now? What happens to the people who paid to see my fight in Brazil. This is the second time this happened. I’m tired of this.”

Although Silva wants to please his fans and give them all the show that they paid for, he says he is tired of going in whichever direction the UFC points him in as he has stepped up as a late replacement to save fights in the past.

Do you think it makes sense to have Yoel Romero vs. Anderson Silva for an interim title fight? Let’s hear it in the comment section!

on 5/2/2017.