(Unless you plan on “purging” that, Anderson, you may need to switch your diet up a bit to make 170 pounds)
It never really becomes crystal clear if we’re getting closer to MMA’s two best pound-for-pound fighters fighting one another or further away from it. UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva has finally warmed to the idea of fighting welterweight king Georges St. Pierre, six years after each man won their first world titles.
Well, Silva has more than warmed to the idea. He’s practically begging for the fight.
He even hijacked St. Pierre and Carlos Condit’s special Primetime moment to lobby for the bout. The much smaller St. Pierre, however, doesn’t seem to like the idea of fighting Anderson nearly as much.
GSP has only gone so far as to wonder out loud if Silva could once again make the welterweight limit, and his head coach has said he’d only want his charge taking the bout if it was at welterweight, not at a heavier catch weight, as Silva’s camp has suggested in the past.
Alright, let’s say that GSP gets his way and Anderson gets on a Machinist diet and gets down to welterweight…unlikely but if he did we could get more than a “legacy fight.” We’d get an honest to goodness, here and now title fight.
Well, don’t you worry your pretty lil head about that exciting possibility. UFC President Dana White is here to dampen your enthusiasm.
When asked last Saturday if GSP’s belt would be on the line if “The Spider” came down in weight to fight him, White replied, “Probably not, because I don’t know how many times Anderson would actually defend it.”
Great. So if St. Pierre gets his wish he’d be fighting an emaciated Silva who wouldn’t even have the incentive of getting a hold of another title belt if he earned it with a win.
Unless Uncle Dana was just being crazy like a match-making fox. Hear me out.
What if White knows it is unlikely, for whatever set of reasons, that Silva would fight at welterweight and so was trying to deflate any excitement around that particular version of the match that he clearly wants to make so that St. Pierre got the picture and opened himself up to a catchweight possibility?
St. Pierre would look pretty bad making Silva come down in weight and then not even risking his belt. And the championship itself would surely be degraded if the two fought at its weight, Silva won and St. Pierre retained a then pointless title.
Who knows? I’m definitely in desperately searching for meaning territory now. But I’m coming down an intense sugar high from eight different Thanksgiving desserts in the last twenty four hours so I’m a bit foggy.
Point is, if White says a 170lb bout between GSP and Anderson won’t be for the belt, then it shouldn’t happen at that weight. Silva has never gone up in weight to face a reigning champion, but he has gone up in weight and fought very good light heavyweights. Fans of this super fight need to hope that St. Pierre meets Silva half way for it to retain meaning.
What do you think, ‘taters? Do you still want to see this fight? What weight do you want to see it at? Should I put down the fork while I’m typing in the future?