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If you have read or listened to an interview with UFC middleweight Michael Bisping over the past year or so, you have no doubt heard “The Count” running down the reasons why he thinks he deserves a shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

Bisping is convinced that he and Chris Weidman are the No. 1 and No. 2 contenders for the middleweight crown. With Weidman now out of his scheduled December 29 scrap against Tim Boetsch due to a shoulder injury and UFC president Dana White pushing hard for a superfight between Silva and UFC welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre, Bisping has upped the ante a bit.

He has called for his January 19 fight against Vitor Belfort to be for the interim middleweight title.

And you know what? He may have a valid point.

Despite St-Pierre’s seeming disinterest and a fairly deep pool of top contenders in the UFC’s welterweight division, White seems obsessed with getting St-Pierre in the Octagon with Silva.

Hey, I don’t blame the guy for that; he’s got a business to run, and he’s pretty confident that he can sell out Dallas Stadium’s 100,000 seats for a card headlined by that bout. However, outside of the win that the fight would provide to the promotion’s bottom line, it would really screw things up for the welterweight and middleweight divisions.

Silva has not been the most active fighter in defending his crown over the last two years. He defended the title twice in 2011 and once in 2012, winning each of those fights in convincing displays.

If he faces St-Pierre in May, which is the month that White has thrown out there for the potential superfight, you can guarantee Silva will go more than one full calendar year between title defenses, with his last defense being his July 7, 2012 TKO of Chael Sonnen.

Not defending the title for one year or more, superfight or not, best fighter to ever step foot in the Octagon or not, is something that cheats the fans. Not to mention the fact that it puts an entire division of athletes, whose careers are not all that lengthy, on ice for a prolonged period. 

As for the welterweight division, throwing St-Pierre in a superfight against Silva would be even worse.

That division has been effectively sitting around waiting since Carlos Condit defeated Nick Diaz for the interim title in February of this year. Now that St-Pierre has become the undisputed champion with his unanimous decision victory over Condit on November 17, does the UFC really want to put that division on hold for another long stretch of time?

I believe Bisping’s suggestion that his fight against Belfort be elevated to an interim title fight has some credence and also lends itself to the thought that if the Silva versus St-Pierre fight were to happen that an(other) interim welterweight champion may need to be crowned.

I won’t deny the fact that a Silva versus St-Pierre fight is compelling, and I would definitely tune in, but for what it would do to the sport and the weight divisions that are ruled over by two of the best fighters we have ever seen, I would argue against making it happen. 

With that being said, if the powers that be are hell bent on making that fight happen, they do need to have an active champion in the middleweight division. Why not make it the winner of the Bisping versus Belfort fight? That title would need to come with one caveat; the winner must defend the title during 2012. 

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