Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva is teasing a big change in his professional career. By looking back on history, Silva ignited public imagination with talks of a super fight with Roy Jones Jr. This was before UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor ever decided to make the jump and fight Floyd Mayweather.
It’s been well documented that Silva was pulled from his bout against Kelvin Gastelum at the UFC Fight Night 122 event after he was flagged due to a potential U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) violation.
With a second failed USADA drug test hanging over the former UFC champion, both he and Jones Jr. appear to be trying to get back the one that got away. For years now, the two fighters have been trying to make this fight happen. Now, talks about it happening have begun once again after Jones Jr. went on The Ask Gary Vee Show and said that he is still pursuing a boxing bout with the former UFC middleweight champion.
“I’m still trying to fight Anderson Silva right now. Me and Anderson Silva have been trying to fight way before Floyd Mayweather and McGregor ever thought about this. We’ve been trying to fight for nine years now, and they would not let him get free to fight me. . . Me and him could have did this a long time ago, and we were at the pinnacle of our careers when we first started talking about it so why they still won’t let us fight right now, I don’t know.”
Silva first called for a boxing match with Jones Jr. back in 2009. At the time, Silva was in the middle of his dominant title run. Jones Jr. is hopeful that now the UFC will let them do it the due to the fact that McGregor – Mayweather just happened and it was a big success.
“He still wants to fight me, and I still want to fight him,” said Jones Jr (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting). “He has 14 professional boxing matches, so the different thing about it is, he has boxing experience. So it’s conceivable that he could do it.
“Both of us want to fight right now still, and the UFC won’t let him free to fight. I’m 48, going on 49 in January, and because of how big it is, and how big of an event it is, and I know what it means to him, I’m still willing to fight Anderson Silva tomorrow if he was free to do it.”
Silva took to his official Instagram to respond to Jones’ callout by writing the following:
“Ok Roy Jr this is everything I’ve wanted for years, long before all this happened, it will be a pleasure to step into the ring with you. I have great respect and admiration for everything you’ve done in boxing, and everyone knows that this has always been my great dream. Let’s make this event happen. I think we have this right, in fact, this is something that both You and I are willing to do. So. Let’s make it happen, Mr. Roy.”
This marks the first time that Silva has potentially violated the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency program.
However, this isn’t his first time failing a drug test as he is a repeat offender. If you recall, he failed a drug test around the time of his UFC 183 fight with Nick Diaz in January 2015 before USADA partnered with the MMA promotion.
As a result of that failure, he received a one-year suspension and $380,000 fine from the Nevada State Athletic Commission. At the time, Silva claimed that the reason he failed was due to a tainted sexual enhancer.
It should be noted that in a second interview over the weekend, Jones Jr. said that he doesn’t care about Silva’s history of drug test failures.
“Me and Anderson Silva started this,” Jones Jr. told FightHype. “So me and Anderson Silva are gonna finish this. So if the UFC would go on and let him free – I don’t care about no PEDs. He can have all the PEDs he wants because that’s my man. I don’t believe he’d take PEDs against me, no way, but even if he had a PED show up in his system, I don’t care about that. . . Anderson takes precedence to everybody.”
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