Anderson Silva doesn’t want a rematch with Chris Weidman. Photo via Getty Images.
Anderson Silva and UFC President Dana White are on opposite sides of the fence about an immediate rematch.
Despite White saying that Silva will have a shot at getting the middleweight title back, the now-ex-champ said before the fight that he’s not interested.
“Naw, man. I’m tired, bro,” Silva said in a pre-fight interview leading into Saturday night’s loss. “No rematch, no rematch.”
But the UFC boss said with certainty after the event that “The Spider” will want to get back in the Octagon for another run at the gold.
“Everybody knows … he’s going to want the rematch,” White explained.
Going into UFC 162, a number of fighters and experts in the media chose Weidman to be the one to dethrone Silva from the top of the middleweight division. Turns out they were right, as Weidman landed a left hook in the second round of the main event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The punch dropped Silva, etching his first loss inside the Octagon since making his debut with the promotion in 2006.
Following the fights, White told reporters that he thinks there may be some truth to Silva experiencing relief from losing the fight, but added that there’s another side where the fighter doesn’t want to lose.
White also dismissed the notion that Silva intentionally lost the fight, calling the idea “stupid.”
“This one’s going to sink in (for Silva) a couple days after,” the UFC executive said. “The first thing I hear when I come in is somebody thinks it’s a fix. All this stupid sh*t that people are going to say will start to drive somebody crazy.
“He played around and ended up getting caught.”
White discussed the possibility of having the rematch take place on Super Bowl weekend in February of 2014. The venue, White said, would be the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., which is located just miles away from Weidman’s home in Long Island, N.Y.
With the new champion having beaten Silva by technical knockout, the question now is if the rematch would go the same way. White doesn’t think it will.
If and when Weidman and Silva have another date in the Octagon, all things are expected go differently than they did last Saturday, according to White.
“I think it’ll be a totally different fight,” he said. “Silva-Weidman 2 is [expletive] massive. It’s huge. It’s not just huge here; it’s huge all over the world.”
