One of the few negatives to come out of the mega-fight between Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre moving much closer to reality is that Yushin Okami may have to wait yet again for his UFC middleweight title shot. Okami had been scheduled for a rematch with Anderson Silva at UFC 90 (they fought in 2006 with Okami winning via DQ). Unfortunately Okami suffered an injury and was put on the shelf. Okami returned with a lackluster win over Dean Lister before suffering yet another injury. The combination of inactivity and a loss to Chael Sonnen at UFC 104 seemed to move Okami farther than ever from a shot at the title. But he rebounded from the Sonnen loss with three straight wins and worked his way back into the #1 contender role with a victory over Nate Marquardt in the main event of UFC 122.
Unfortunately for Okami the pressure for the Silva/GSP fight may put that shot on hold yet again. Dana White spoke about the situation during the post-UFC 126 events:
“Look at the 185-pound division. Okami got hurt and couldn’t get that fight and now he’s been waiting forever.”
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“I’ve got to figure out the Okami part of this thing,” White said. “Somebody is going to be pissed.”
BE community member FragglesHateKos wrote a fanpost about the situation and made it clear that there are reasons to go ahead with Okami/Silva before the GSP fight:
GSP still has to get past Jake Shields in April and has said he wants around nine months to add muscle to make the move to middleweight. This gives the UFC the opportunity to have Silva continue cleaning out the division by facing Okami in July at UFC 132. This works for different reasons. First, it gives the July 4th weekend card Anderson Silva as a headliner. Second, he has plenty of time to prepare. And third, if Jake Shields were to stop GSP, the megafight goes away and Silva will have nothing scheduled.
Keeping Silva active and allowing GSP time to properly bulk up is a completely valid reason to go ahead with giving Okami his shot. However, it’s not out of the realm of reality that Okami is able to take advantage of the same holes in Silva’s wrestling that were exploited by Chael Sonnen without Sonnen’s tendency to fall into submissions and derails the mega-fight completely.
So what of it? Give Okami his shot now or make him wait for after the superfight?