When Jon Jones was pulled from his UFC 200 headliner against Daniel Cormier yesterday, there were more than a few fighters willing to step up and face the last-second challenge. Michael Bisping, Alexander Gustafsson, Gegard Mousasi…I think Conor McGregor threw his name in there at one point…the point is, it looked as if Cormier was going to get that big payday after all.
One name we didn’t expected to see pop on the list of potential contenders, however, was Anderson Silva. He’s a natural middleweight for starters (though he has moved up to light heavy on a few occasions), and until recently, was expected to face Uriah Hall at UFC 198 until gallbladder surgery forced him out. Then again, UFC 200 is about pulling off all the stops, and with all due respect to the other names on that list, they are GARBAGE PEOPLE when compared to Silva.
So now, following reports from both Globo and TMZ, it looks like Silva vs. Cormier will in fact be going down this weekend after all.
According to both reports, which were later confirmed by MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani, the bout will be a three-round, non-title fight. For whatever reason, the addition of this fight has bumped the women’s bantamweight title fight between Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes into the main event slot of the evening, replacing Mark Hunt vs. Brock Lesnar.
It’s hard to say what a win for Cormier will actually mean given Silva’s recent fight history — his last fight was a controversial decision loss to Michael Bisping, and he hasn’t actually won a fight since 2012 — but still, I suppose a win over the former G.O.A.T is still a win over the former G.O.A.T (not to mention, that massive payday). But knowing how this sport operates, it’s more than likely that he will KO Cormier in the first 30 seconds of the fight and we can dive head first into this whole chaotic mess all over again.
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