Even With Weight Discrepancies, the Wait for a Silva Showdown May Be Over Soon

During Rich Franklin's preparation for his UFC 99 match-up against 'The Axe Murderer' Wanderlei Silva he enlisted the help of middleweight champion Anderson Silva, whose sparring matches with the long time Pride champion are legendary.

This created a mini-rivalry between Wandy and Anderson.

The UFC would love to do this fight—two of the most exciting fighters who have a history but have never fought each over.

However as Wandy has started his drop from LHW to MW Anderson has started his transition from MW to LHW. However there is a rumour circulating that Anderson is contemplating a permanent move to the larger weight class.

This would seem to scrap any chances of Wandy vs. Anderson, but in reality this makes the fight even more possible. In his UFC 99 Wandy seemed like the weight cut might have affected him more than he thought so another fight at a catchweight of 195 lbs would do him good.

Anderson seems to easily gain weight to get to his natural 205lb weight so there is no need for him to fight Wandy right? Why doesn't he just fight a top ranked LHW?

Well the answer to that is scheduling, the only fighters ranked above Forrest are Rampage, Rashad, Shogun and Lyoto.

Lyoto vs. Shogun is scheduled for UFC 104 so it would appear that neither of them would be available until at least UFC 108 whereas Rampage vs. Rashad is scheduled for UFC 107 so the earliest for them would be UFC 111. Anderson can and should fight way before these fighters are available.

Anderson could remain at middleweight and defend his title a few times but if this rumour is true he seems to be bored of that division. So fighting Wandy is a possibility, both scheduling (Wandy looks like he is fighting at either UFC 105 or 106 which is perfect for Anderson) and as a draw (the fight would be a great draw) because of the latter it would appear to be more likely for UFC 105 in Manchester, this is because the UFC have stated that they want to put on a spectacle for the English fans and this would be the obvious main event leaving Bisping and Hardy on the undercard.

If (a big if) this rumour is true this match-up would be one of the most hyped fights in the UFC and would be a Brazilian version of Couture vs. Liddell.