Dana White and Anderson Silva have had an interesting history, but these past few weeks have seen them going at one another constantly.
Silva claims that Dana White and the UFC didn't do a great job when he finished his career. Considering that Silva is arguably the greatest UFC fighter in history, having held the middleweight title for nearly seven years, it's easy to see why he's upset.
When Dana White found out about what Silva said, he had an interesting response. It's not every day that White responds like this, but it's becoming more frequent.
“Anderson Silva, what the f*** is Anderson Silva talking about?
“When have any of you ever heard me talk negative, except for the fight in Abu Dhabi, about Anderson Silva? Never. I’ve never talked bad about Anderson Silva. Not only that, we let the guy fight through his contract, he lost seven of his last eight, or eight of his last nine fight, and always treated him with — I don’t know where the hell this is coming from, from him that then I started trying to make is so he couldn’t make money after. I said, ‘Jake Paul is looking to fight somebody, fight Anderson Silva, that guy’s out there, he’s available, he’s 47 years old.’ It’s baffling to me.”
With what Dana White said, Silva had to have said something crazy, right? With all of what Silva said, it's not insane for White to respond how he did.
“When I was done in UFC, everybody — especially Dana White — said, ‘Oh, Anderson can’t fight anymore. Nobody in the same age [group] with Anderson can fight, it’s terrible,’ and blah, blah, blah. And talking a lot of sh*t about me,” Silva told. “And I feel disrespected because it doesn’t matter what happened — fight is fight. You can win, you can lose.
“When you make a success of [MMA], the one thing you need to do for your fighters is [give] respect. In that, I feel no respect. But I don’t care because when I stop fighting, I’m gonna stop fighting because I say I’m gonna stop it. Nobody can say for me I [should] stop. No one can say for [anybody] you need to stop now. Nobody. I’ll stop when I say I’m done.”
At the moment, nothing else has been said from either side. Considering that Dana White probably wants to make sure his image looks good to the public, it's best for him to just stay out of this nonsense.
It could be likely that Dana White and Anderson Silva do sort this out. With Anderson Silva being one of the best UFC fighters of all time, it would be in Dana White's best interest to make sure the relationship is a strong one.
