UFC welterweight Erick Silva is coming off a rough knockout loss to Dong Hyun Kim at UFC Fight Night 29 earlier this month, but that doesn’t mean he wants a cakewalk in his next Octagon outing.
Silva, who is 3-3 under the UFC banner, tweeted a rather interesting challenge to top-ranked welterweight Demian Maia.
E ai @demianmaia o q acha, d voltar as vitórias em cima d um cara ruim de chão e horrível nas defesas de quedas com eu?
— Erick Silva (@ErickSilvaMMA) October 31, 2013
Of course that tweet isn’t in English, so here is MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz to provide us all with a translation.
Silva tweeted: Demian, what do you think of getting back to the wins vs. a guy with a bad ground game and terrible takedown defense like me?
— Guilherme Cruz (@guicruzzz) October 31, 2013
At one time considered one of the top young prospects on the UFC roster, the Silva hype train seemingly came to a screeching halt when he lost to Kim in front of his Brazilian countrymen.
Nevertheless, the 29-year-old is trying to goad Maia into a fight by underselling his ground game: the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt has won nine of his 15 professional fights by way of submission.
Still, he would be ill-advised to get in a grappling match with Maia, a multiple-time BJJ champion who is regarded as one of the most skilled black belts in the world.
A former middleweight title challenger, Maia appeared to have reinvented himself at 170 pounds, rattling off three decisive wins between July 2012 and Jon Fitch.
However, the Sao Paulo native’s immediate title hopes were cut short by a close split decision loss to Jake Shields at UFC Fight Night 30.
While it seems like a stretch from a rankings standpoint, would a Maia vs. Silva matchup draw enough fan interest for the UFC to book the fight?
John Heinis is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA Editor for eDraft.com.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com