Author: Matt Erickson [matt-erickson]

Following his win over Carlos Condit this past Saturday, UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre questioned whether he needed to gain weight at all to fight middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva.

Silva, he said, fought in PRIDE at 168 pounds and possibly carried the kind of frame suited to weight gains and drops – unlike him.

Silva again expressed his desire to fight St-Pierre following UFC 154. And while UFC President Dana White still hopes to make the match in 2013, one incentive would likely be off the table if Silva dropped to welterweight: GSP’s belt.

The Dan Henderson-Lyoto Machida fight that UFC President Dana White has been promising for a while looks to be closer to official.

Though Henderson earlier this month said he would meet fellow contender Machida on the UFC’s Super Bowl weekend card, UFC 156, it appears the two will wait until later in the month to throw down.

The two light heavyweights will meet Feb. 23 in Anaheim on a card expected to be UFC 157, sources with knowledge of the booking on Wednesday confirmed to MMAjunkie.com.

A date for the UFC’s next trip to Montreal is not set, according to UFC President Dana White.

UFC Director of Canadian Operations Tom Wright recently announced that the promotion would hold an event on March 16, but White said “we’ll see what happens” when pressed about a quick return to the Quebec city.

“Tom’s getting a little aggressive over there,” White said with a chuckle.

Less than five weeks before what could have been the biggest fight of his career, UFC middleweight contender Chris Weidman is out of a UFC 155 bout against Tim Boetsch.

Stepping in for him will be teammate Constantinos Philippou, who this past Saturday had a planned bout scrapped the day of the fight. MMAjunkie.com on Wednesday confirmed the news with sources close to the promotion.

Newsday first reported the development, and UFC officials followed up with their own confirmation.

The super-polite way to put it would be to say Nate Diaz likes to try to get in his opponents’ head.

And then there’s what Benson Henderson was a little more blunt in calling it: Diaz likes to talk crap.

To get ready to defend his UFC lightweight title against Diaz next month, Henderson has been training using a steady diet of trash talk from his teammates.

Sixty-eight professional mixed martial arts fights, no matter against who or where, is not too shabby.

The fact that Rich Clementi has done it all across the country and around the world for the biggest promotions just has to be icing on the cake. But this week, after 13 years in the sport, Clementi decided to hang up the gloves.

Just three days after a loss in Bellator’s lightweight tournament semifinals, Clementi announced his retirement on his Facebook page.