UFC 101 Press Conference Notes
I was able to catch a stream of the UFC 101 press conference.
Here were some of the key points:
– Dana White said they would definitely go back to Philadelphia.
– White thought Thales Leites should’ve won his fight with Alessio Sakara, but he’s not a judge.
– He also thought the stoppage in the Amir Sadollah/Johny Hendricks fight was early, but said he wasn’t a referee.
– He said that Diego Sanchez would fight B.J. Penn next.
– He said he’d love to make the Anderson Silva vs. Lyoto Machida fight, but Anderson said he’d never do it.
– Dana said Tito would be fighting Mark Coleman.
– He said he’d love to have a UFC card at Fenway Park in Boston.
– Ricardo Almeida said that he may move down to 170. He also thought his elbow was going to pop from the arm bar and can’t straighten his arm right now.
– Dana said he’s thought about merging the UFC and WEC, but that’s it. He’s thought about a lot of things.
I hope Dana respects Anderson’s desire not to fight his friend Machida.
There are other and better fights they can make at either 185 or 205 that will be a bigger draw and show respect for their best fighters wishes.
Plus I don’t really like the idea of one guy holding two belts. Would make a title defense happen maybe once a year. No good in my book.
After tonight, Machida/Silva is a huge money fight in my opinion. There might only be one fight bigger at 205 and that’s Rampage/Evans.
why isnt anyone talking about what forrest was on? it is just shocking to me what happened there. wow. speechless.
Probably because he did he same thing after losing to Keith Jardine.
That display really hurt Griffin’s reputation and standing in the UFC. Will be hard to market him now.
Silva and White really went head-to-head over the Machida question. Word came out today that Silva offered to move up to 205 for good and vacate his 185 belt.
If that is true, I think one stipulation would be no Machida fight. Let Silva fight Evans, Jackson and Tito Ortiz then retire.
Silva may be the only guy right now that can beat Machida. I can understand Silva’s desire not to fight his friend, but I think that’s the money match. I say leave Silva at 185 and tell GSP to grow some balls and take a step up in weight. A loss at 185 wouldn’t hurt him and a win would make him best P4P. I don’t see how it’s a losing situation for St. Pierre.
I think St. Pierre gets inside his own head. He’s even said that in order for him to take the fight, he’d have to put on 10 pounds of muscle, and that would take a year to do.
They could make that Silva/GSP match, but to me, if the guy can dominate the heavier weight, it’s kind of a farce to put him back down.