LOS ANGELES — On Wednesday, Anderson Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, caused a stir by saying the UFC middleweight champion was open to fighting controversial welterweight Nick Diaz.
One day later, UFC president Dana White shot down the hypothetical fight, and said if any welterweight was going to fight Silva, it would be champion Georges St-Pierre.
Speaking to reporters at the UFC on FOX 4 press conference at the JW Marriott hotel, White all but mocked the notion of a Silva-Diaz fight.
“Nick Diaz makes no sense, OK?” White said. “I know that sounds fun — ‘Yeah! throw Nick Diaz in there!’ — if you really look at the the thing, Nick Diaz just lost to [Carlos] Condit, at 170, so that gives him the opportunity to move up to [1]85 and fight the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world? In what [expletive] universe does that make sense?
Instead, White said that the long-discussed superfight between the UFC’s middleweight and welterweight champions makes sense. And he hinted it might be more than just speculation.
“Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva are both considered, and most people argue, I think finally, especially with the inactivity from GSP, that people now consider [Silva] the pound-for-pounder, but there was an argument there for a long time and if GSP hasn’t been this inactive, maybe the debate would still be there. But he’s definitely top two or three in the world, depending on who you ask. And if you were really going to make a fight like that, it would make more sense with Georges St Pierre, than it would with Diaz.”
When asked if the UFC would hold Silva out until after the November welterweight title bout between St-Pierre and interim champ Condit, White wouldn’t deny the possibility.
“Maybe,” White said with a laugh. “That’s what we’re thinking. But anything can happen.
“It’s always theoretical. You don’t know what’s going to happen, we’ll see what happens in the future here, and maybe that is the fight we’re gonna make. I can tell you this not theoretically, Diaz-Anderson is not going to happen. That’s just ridiculous.”
As for Soares’ Wednesday words, in which he also rejected the notion of a Silva fight with either light heavyweight champion Jon Jones or middleweight contender Chris Weidman, White chalked it up to posturing.
“That’s the same stuff they said about Chael Sonnen, you know what I mean? They said they weren’t going to do that fight either. This is what they do every time the fight’s over. They start talking about who they won’t fight and who they might fight.”