Anderson Silva moving to heavyweight?

Anderson Silva apparently isn’t content bouncing between middleweight and light heavyweight. A report from Sports Illustrated recently stated that the 185 pound champion wants to move up to heavyweight and compete with the big boys. The fighter SI claims Silva has his eye on: Frank Mir, who beat Silva’s friend and training partner Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira back at UFC 92.

Anderson Silva - Image: Zuma Press

This is pretty crazy news, but Anderson has been chasing a challenge for the past two years and hasn’t been able to find one even after taking a few fights at light heavyweight. Not only should fights at heavyweight satisfy that need, but it will also set Silva up for some huge paydays.

So how did we end up here? The UFC’s middleweight division has been pretty anemic for a few years now, and the arrival of Anderson Silva as a world beater three years ago just made the rest of the guys at 185 look even worse. Now the division has built up a bit with solid names like Dan Henderson, Demian Maia, and Nate Marquardt, but for all their skills a fight with Anderson Silva seems like an exercise in pointlessness. Silva is just too good for them.

The UFC decided to bring Silva up to light heavyweight to see how he’d fare there. His two fights against James Irvin and Forrest Griffin lasted just under four and a half minutes combined. But his friendship with current light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida means he refuses to challenge for the belt. That means there’s not much point in having him fight other contenders, which stuck everyone in the same problem they had at 185 pounds: who does Silva fight now?

Moving to heavyweight seems pretty crazy, but it solves a lot of problems. Silva wants to set up a legacy and he wants to make as much money as possible before retiring. Fights against Frank Mir, Randy Couture, Brock Lesnar, and Mirko Crocop would accomplish that easily. The UFC gets to free up the middleweight belt and let a more equally skilled group of fighters scrap for it in a suddenly relevant middleweight division. And Anderson Silva isn’t stuck fighting random light heavyweight odd ends so long as his pal Lyoto Machida is champ.

No dates, names, opponents, or anything else have been announced regarding this, but last week’s sudden game of heavyweight musical chairs points towards something interesting brewing. The moment we get more info from Dana White and the UFC regarding the situation, I’ll post it up here. For now, you’ll just have to wait and salivate like the rest of us.