Georges St-Pierre is the poster boy for the UFC and why not? He is clean cut, intelligent, a great fighter and an easy sell all around the world for not only the promotion, but big players in the world of sport. With advertising campaigns from Gatorade and Under Armour featuring the Canadian fighter, one can see the true power of his star.
Another face of the UFC is Brazilian middleweight Anderson Silva, who maybe isn’t as media or fan friendly as St-Pierre due to the language barrier, but he more than makes up for that with his eight consecutive title defences and spectacular finishes.
Both fighters have pretty much cleaned out their respective divisions and being only one weight class apart from each other fans have been begging the UFC to make the St-Pierre vs Silva superfight happen.
The buzz for the super fight has been going strong for the better part of the last two years, but every time it appears as if it may be a possibility, it gets shot down and put on the back burner until both Silva and St-Pierre win their next fights.
Silva was coming off his front kick knockout of Vitor Belfort and White had said that one of the last pieces in place for the super fight to happen was for St-Pierre to beat Jake Shields at UFC 129 in Toronto, which he did.
Obviously St-Pierre’s performance against Shield’s didn’t quite live up to its expectations and that can partly be blamed on the fact that St-Pierre injured his eye and Shields, like many of St-Pierre’s past opponents, wasn’t bringing the fight to the champion.
St-Pierre’s performance, coupled with the fact that the UFC now owns Strikeforce and the rights to all their fighters, there seemed to be a strong push from the fans and media to make the St-Pierre vs Nick Diaz fight happen and that is exactly what was put together for UFC 137.
Once again, St-Pierre vs. Silva was pushed to the wayside as St-Pierre will defend his welterweight title against Diaz, and Silva will be putting his middleweight title on the line against the last man to beat him Yushin Okami.
The fight with Diaz has the makings of a good fight and one can’t really blame the UFC for putting the fight on, but it is difficult to say with conviction that the matchup will put St-Pierre in danger of losing his belt.
Diaz is an aggressive fighter and there is no doubting the fact that he will bring the fight to St-Pierre. He has a vast enough skill set to compete with St-Pierre standing up or on the ground.
A fight with Diaz will probably bring out the best in St-Pierre and will most likely be a very exciting fight.
The same can not be said for the Silva vs. Okami fight. Although Okami is a great fighter with a solid wrestling base that has frustrated many of the middleweight division’s top contenders, he simply doesn’t bring any fireworks into his matches.
Okami will look to take Silva down and Silva will patiently wait to counter Okami in the exchanges. Of course this could turn out to be a great fight, but it certainly doesn’t have the feel that a St-Pierre vs. Silva matchup would have.
St-Pierre would have to search out take downs against Silva who has shown that his one weakness in mixed martial arts is his wrestling, and Silva would have to keep the fight standing, where he would stand a very good chance at catching the welterweight champion with one of his devastating strikes.
Despite Silva’s lack of a solid wrestling game his Brazilian jiu-jitsu makes up for it and is something St-Pierre would have to watch out for while hanging out in the Spider’s guard, just ask Chael Sonnen about that.
The facts that this fight has been kicking around for two years, that both Silva and St-Pierre have kept on winning and both guys are under the UFC banner really begs the question, why hasn’t Silva vs. St-Pierre come to fruition?
There are a number of speculations that can made.
For one, the UFC has two of the most dominant champions ever and to force one of them to lose maybe bad for the fighter’s image and ultimately for the promotion. That being said, if St-Pierre has to move up to middleweight or Silva down to welterweight, most people won’t hold a loss for the fighter who changes weight classes against them.
Secondly, a fighting weight seems to be difficult to agree on. St-Pierre has been very careful around the idea of moving up to middleweight, claiming he would do it permanently and that it would be a complete re-orientation of his career—a risk the welterweight champion seems unwilling to take.
Asking Silva to drop to welterweight is a tall task considering his height and natural weight. He did say at one point that he would go down, but all talks of that happening seem to have been shelved.
The last possibility would be for the two fighters to meet somewhere in the middle for a catch weight bout, but then it doesn’t have the lucrativeness of a title fight where one of the fighters is putting their belt on the line.
Speculation aside, there is no doubt that the UFC president Dana White and CEO Lorenza Fertitta have expressed their interest in the fight only to have them come back on their words for some reason unbeknownst to the fans or media.
Dana White is constantly referring to the fight as a fantasy fight where a lot of pieces need to fall into place to make the fight a reality, what exactly those pieces are is anybody’s guess.
Of course St-Pierre vs. Diaz should be an exciting fight and despite Okami’s sometimes boring style, Silva has the ability to add excitement to any fight he is in, unless his opponents’ names are Demian Maia or Thales Leites.
Maybe once these matchups have gone and past and if both Silva and St-Pierre still have UFC gold around their waists fans will get the chance to witness one of the grandest pound-for-pound matchups in the history of the sport.
Hopefully it happens soon because Silva certainly isn’t getting any younger at 36 years of age.
Leon Horne has been contributing to Bleacher Report for three years now. He focuses mainly on mixed martial arts, but he has also written about tennis, football and hockey. Just send him a message if you want to talk sports or discuss any opportunities. You can follow him on Twitter for updates: 
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