Saturday, 22 January 2011

UFC's Georges St-Pierre vs. Anderson Silva superfight could happen in 2011

KILLEEN, Texas – Two victories are all that are needed for a highly anticipated and long-speculated Georges St-Pierre vs. Anderson Silva superfight.

UFC president Dana White said if the UFC's current welterweight and middleweight championships prove successful in their next title defense, they could meet in a rare champion-vs.-champion fight later this year.

"If they both win their fights, that fight makes all the sense in the world," White said.

White made the comments Friday during a Q&A session at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. The session, which was held in conjunction with tonight's "UFC Fight Night 23: UFC Fight for the Troops 2" event, was open only to military personnel, though MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) attended as a media member.

Silva (27-4 MMA, 12-0 UFC) is up first and looks to defend his belt for a record eighth time when he meets Vitor Belfort in the headliner of next month's UFC 126 event. St-Pierre (21-2 MMA, 15-2 UFC), meanwhile, goes for his sixth straight title defense when he takes on former EliteXC and Strikeforce champ Jake Shields in April at UFC 129.

Both are the oddsmakers' favorites and are expected to win.

"If that happens, then we're probably going to do that fight," White said of St-Pierre vs. Silva.

St-Pierre and Silva currently are ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in the Yahoo! Sports pound-for-pound rankings (MMAjunkie.com staff members are pollsters). White recently admitted that both fighters essentially have cleaned out their divisions, which is the UFC head honcho's usual criteria for booking fights with competitors from two different weight classes.

"I don't like guys fighting each other at different weights until they've done what those two have done, and they've both done it," White said after St-Pierre's latest win, a dominating decision victory over Josh Koscheck.

However, the Shields fight could be St-Pierre's swan song for the welterweight division. As St-Pierre has suggested in the past, White expects the 170-pound champ to make a permanent move to 185 pounds if he were to fight Silva. That fight likely would take place at Silva's weight and would mark St-Pierre's arrival in the middleweight division.

"Georges St-Pierre would move to 185 and stay at that weight and not go back to 170," White said on Friday.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive