UFC vets share more stories about ‘angry small little man’ Joe Silva

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Several other UFC veterans share more of their #JoeSilvaStories.

Many UFC veterans weren’t too pleased about how they were treated by former matchmaker Joe Silva. Recently, a few of them shared their personal stories via Twitter bearing the hashtag #JoeSilvaStories.

As it turns out, many others have their grievances and have since decided to join in. One of the first ones to follow suit was former UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, who had a couple of encounters with Silva before and after his 2016 title fight with Rafael dos Anjos.

Gerald Harris, who had a four-fight stint in the UFC, also opened up about his peculiar release, and said it had to do with Silva.

Canadian bantamweight Roland Delorme, who fought for the UFC from 2011 to 2014, also had something to say.

Dec 4 (2011), I had my first fight in (the) UFC. After I won, I asked Joe Silva if he needed me in jan cause it was my bday my daughters first bday and christmas, plus new years and i just wanted to take rest of month off.

But if you need me I’ll stay in the gym. He said ‘I don’t need you,’ I said ok. Then he calls me Dec 28, offers me a fight in two weeks. I said, ‘No, I couldn’t even make the weight if I wanted to,’ and we already had this talk.

So ‘cause I said no, they put me on the shelf for six months, waited till I was starving and broke before offering a fight on two weeks’ notice against a killer. Thats how UFC does business. You’re just cattle to them.

Former UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub also chimed in.

“Joe Silva is 5-foot-1. He’s this little Sherdog forum troll who got some power in the UFC — a lot of power and controlled a lot of guy’s destinies. He got drunk on ego,” Schaub said on his podcast.

“I remember before I fought Crocop (he said) ‘You better not treat him like your f—king friend. Go out there and knock him out.’ And I’m like ‘Alright. Thanks dude! You’re 5-foot though, yeah, thank you!’

“I remember when I fought Lavar Johnson, they wanted it to be a slugfest cause’ Lavar Johnson was a knockout artist,” he continued. “The guy had zero wrestling… I took this boy down over and over and over and over. Didn’t play the game at all where he just wanted to stand and bang, didn’t do that at all, dominated him.

“I see Joe Silva and he said ‘that was a close one,’ meaning if I would’ve lost, I would’ve been cut. He goes ‘that was a shit fight! You should’ve been at the first fight of the night.’ They said ‘If Brendan would’ve lost that fight, we would’ve cut him there, especially if we knew he’s going to do a performance like that.’

“After I fought Arlovski, I got some pretty disturbing words, saying how bad the fight was, and just with the worst language you’ve ever heard,” he said. “I don’t have any ill will against Joe Silva because he’s a product of the machine, and no one was there to check him. So the way he would talk with guys, he would get away with it, because you couldn’t do it. He controlled your destiny.”

Schaub also claims he once listened in a phone call between his manager and Joe Silva, where they were trying to get new deals for him and Rory Macdonald.

“It will break your heart the way they look at you,” Schaub continued. “Oh my god dude, it was the most vile — and he was talking about me and Rory Macdonald, one of the greatest to ever do it — the things he said about me and Rory was just the darkest, nastiest shit you’ve ever heard. I wish I never heard it.

“It’s going to catch up with you, man. Karma’s a motherf—ker.”

Schaub went on to compare Silva to abusive police officers.

“Imagine being Joe Silva, you’re this little troll, you’re 5-foot-1, and then all of a sudden you have this power,” Schaub said. “It’s kind of like a lot of these bad apples who are cops. They go from being these schmucks in life, have no control over their own life, their girl’s probably sucking other dudes’ d—ks, and then they get this power, and they take it out on people. They get power drunk.

“Every dude he’s talking shit to could snap his f—king neck, but he knows he’s untouchable.”

Former title challenger Gray Maynard also added to his previous account. This time, he revealed that Silva asked him to break Roger Huerta’s arm in their 2009 fight, as punishment for speaking out against the UFC.

“He spoke out against the UFC,” Maynard said on the recent episode of the Jon Fitch Knows Nothing podcast (transcript by BJPenn.com). “They were pissed. They were so pissed. Joe Silva called me up and said ‘look, I’m giving you this fight as a gift. I want you to go out there and break his arm. I want you to f—ng kill him and blah, blah, blah.

“I was just like ‘holy sh-t, they are ruthless about that.’ [It was] because he spoke out,” said Maynard, who won via split decision.

He also reacted to the other fighters’ stories.

But while many fighters have their grievances towards Silva, one manager decided to offer praise.

Silva, whose harsh negotiation tactics came to light during the anti-trust lawsuit against the UFC, was deemed by Dana White as the “greatest matchmaker in the history of any combat sport.” He was inducted into the UFC Hall-of-Fame in 2017.