Tim Sylvia is a former two-time UFC heavyweight champion. He defended his title a total of three times—tied for the most defenses ever—but he hasn’t seen the inside of the Octagon since 2008 when he lost an interim title fight to Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira.
However, in his last seven fights, Sylvia has gone 6-1 with five finishes, and has launched a campaign to try to get himself back into the UFC.
If you were to look at Sylvia’s Twitter over the past couple of days, it is filled with him re-tweeting fans who want to see him back in the Octagon, and tweets from him about wanting to get back into the UFC.
He even got into a spat with current UFC heavyweight Cheick Kongo to try and drum up interest to propel himself back into the UFC.
Sylvia deserves another shot in the Octagon. He has earned it with his recent performances and his history in the organization.
Throughout his career, Sylvia has had victories over current UFC fighters such as Ben Rothwell and Brandon Vera.
He also claims that he fought when there weren’t that many UFC events each year, but now there are many more, which means many more fighters, and the UFC has to fill up cards. Sylvia claims he can “beat 80 percent of the guys in the UFC.”
Dana White‘s biggest argument against Sylvia is that he was champion when the division was weakest, and when Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski were “knocking each other out every weekend.”
Dana also says that the last time he saw Sylvia was when he was knocked out by Ray Mercer.
In a recent video released by Sylvia, he makes his case to come back to the Octagon.
Dana White has no real reason to keep Sylvia out of the UFC. White told MMAjunkie.com,
“I have no beef with Tim Sylvia. The guy’s out there trying to make a living and doing what he’s doing. But for him to make the claim that he could knock out 80 percent of the heavyweights in the UFC, what I just said before says it all.”
Sylvia can claim whatever he wants, whether or not White agrees with him shouldn’t be a large factor. If White has no issues with Sylvia, then he has no reason to keep him out of the UFC.
White has often given the fans what they want, and there is a large contingent of fans that want to see Sylvia back in the Octagon.
Sylvia is a veteran, can make the 265-pound limit and deserves another shot in the Octagon.
Whether you want to see him in the cage to see him lose, or whether you want to see him win, he deserves to get back into the UFC.
Tim McTiernan is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. For the latest news on everything MMA, follow me on twitter @TimMcTiernan.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com