Tatame had up an interview with Anderson Silva which Fightline.com took the time to translate. The meat of the interview points out that regardless of all the talking Dana White has been doing, Anderson doesn’t seem to have any current plans to stay at 205 and attempt to hold both titles at the same time.
Read on:
Silva On Moving Up To 205:
When I fought on Pride, a 185 weight class didnt existed, only a 205 weight class and I always fought on it. But I didn’t had the same physical quality and technique I have now. It’s an experience we are doing it for many reasons. One of them is as a personal favor for Dana White that I could do this fight and I, alongside all my friends that help me, concluded that it is possible. We will see. I will try to do my job as I always have been dong, independent of the result, and I’m going to test myself to put me to the test and see if I can do it. If the result is positive, then it means all our new experimental training methods worked. Whoever has a mouth, speaks whatever they want. Irvin is right and that’s why everyone has its own weight. I don’t have intention to fight on this category and Im only doing this because they (UFC) asked me and I think I can do it. I don’t intend to fight for this belt, this belt belongs to Lyoto (Machida) and he already proved that. I’m going to fight because I like to fight and because I like challenges.
This is, of course, in pretty much direct conflict with the following words from Dana White back in mid-June:
Anderson Silva is, uh, is– you know, when I always talk about “real fighters,” this guy is, is definitely a real fighter. He wants to fight all the time. Most mixed martial artists will fight three times a year; this guy wants to fight six times a year. He’s basically cleaned out the 185 pound division, and he’s always looking to challenge himself, so he wanted to move up to 205 and test the waters there. You know, I’m not gonna tell him “no.” I mean, right now– it’s never been a better time to be a mixed martial arts fan than it is right now. I mean, we’ve got the pound-for-pound… You can turn on SpikeTV on July 19th and, for free, see the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, you know, make his first move up to 205 pounds. It’s a great time for fans right now.
It just strikes me as odd whenever we see a fighter and promotional head in public contradicting each other. I’m certainly not implying any sort of conspiracy, I just don’t understand why Dana couldn’t sell the fight as “We knew exactly the guy we wanted to fight to show that the UFC is the home of the world’s best fighters. We went to Anderson and said ‘hey, we’ve got an idea’ and he didn’t even hesitate in accepting.” rather than flipping things around and then looking kind of clueless less than a month later.