Anderson Silva (left) reacts to being declared the winner in his fight against Chael Sonnen (white shirt, right) after their UFC middleweight championship bout at UFC 148 inside MGM Grand Garden Arena on July 7, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Josh Hedges via UFC.com)
Following this past weekends UFC 149 event in Calgary, there remains no clear cut contender for the middleweight title, with many fighters in the division doing their best to jockey for the No. 1 position in order to challenge UFC champion Anderson Silva.
If that wasn’t enough to make UFC match makers crazy, one of the managers in Anderson Silva’s camp has come out to muddy the waters even more by saying the only fight that makes sense is a “catchweight” fight versus UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre.
Blackhouse founder, and Gracie Jiu-jitsu black belt, Jorge Guimaraes spoke to Tatame.com about who ‘The Spider’ should face next.
“That’s a big joke,” Silva’s manager, Jorge Guimaraes, said about Chris Weidman, Tim Boetsch and Alan Belcher’s challenges. “Everybody saw that it worked for Chael, and he got really famous with that, and now everybody wants to be on the spotlight”.
The manager believes that only one fight makes sense for the middleweight champion right now, and it’s not on the middleweight division.
“No opponent makes sense for Anderson at this moment. Unless we do a catchweight against Georges St. Pierre,” he suggests. “They didn’t offer the fight, but he’s the only one that could do a super fight. Anderson has the biggest paycheck in the UFC, and you can’t promote an event with these amateur kids that are coming up now”.
St-Pierre is busy recovering from knee surgery in preparation for his return to the Octagon to face UFC interim welterweight champion Carlos Condit this fall.
If a fight between Silva and St-Pierre were to go down a lot would have to happen, putting a bout like this a long ways down the road. St-Pierre has stated in the past that if he ever fought Silva, he’d have to put on more size as he walked around near the 185-lbs limit for middleweight.
It’s more likely that Silva and his camp are simply posturing, as has been done in the past, to force Dana White and the UFC to ante up an even bigger payday for ‘The Spider’s’ next match.