(Oh, this? Shaving accident.)
If Matt Hamill’s uninspired victory over Roger Hollett at UFC 152 didn’t make him reconsider his decision to hastily unretire from MMA just a year after retiring, perhaps his next fight will.
MMAWeekly is reporting that the TUF 3 alum and 14-fight UFC veteran is currently in talks to face Brazilian slugger Thiago Silva at the tentatively-titled “Fight Night 29″ card that goes down on October 9th. The only other fight currently booked for the card is Erick Silva vs. Dong Hyun Kim.
As much as we respect Hamill’s skills both inside the octagon and around the opposite sex, this matchup worries us, and not just because Brazilians are unstoppable killing machines when fighting in the motherland. Without getting into the age old debate of whether or not retirement should be up to the fighter and the fighter alone, can we all just agree that Hamill’s prime years in the spotlight have come and gone? He’s getting up there in age, he’s fighting in a division currently being cleaned out by the man who did this to him and he looked like a shadow of his former self against Hollett (who has since been fired, BTW). Could ring rust have been at least partially responsible for that last one? Sure, we’ll give him that, but that doesn’t change what we’ve come to know about his place in the current light heavyweight landscape.
Then again, maybe title glory isn’t what Hamill is trying to capture. Maybe the Gustafsson loss (and the Hollett win, for that matter) left a bad taste in his mouth and he’s just seeking a “good” win to go out on. Maybe he re-retires after the Silva fight whether he loses or wins. Only Hamill could tell us what he’s after, but doesn’t pairing him with Silva seem a little…soon?
Granted, Silva just managed to score his first win in 4 years and has seen so many ups and downs (mostly downs) lately that Hamill might come out the winner (or at least the NC not-loser) regardless of how he actually fares. One thing’s for sure; unless Hamill has made some tremendous improvements to his plodding stand up, he’s going to lose a lot of brain cells along the way.