UFC legend Anderson Silva made more money as a boxer for his match with Julio Cesar Chaves Jr. than in his final three UFC fights. Combined.
“The Spider” revealed the news to SportsNaut in a recent interview, where he took his former bosses to task for disparaging him as he entered the twilight of his career.
“In my fight in Mexico [against Julio Cesar Chaves Jr. in June 2021], I made more money than my last three fights in MMA,” Silva told the site. “I don’t like to talk about the bad, and people say, ‘Oh now you’re out of UFC and you talk bad sh*t about [them].'”
“It was good for me sometimes and it was good for UFC too. It’s done it’s over. But it’s important I say that, everything I say about the situation because this is what happened to me.”
These days, the former middleweight legend is busy promoting a new movie, Lord of the Streets, where he appears alongside fellow ex-UFC star Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. But it wasn’t that long ago that Silva, who successfully defended the UFC’s middleweight championship ten times, was wrapping up his career in the octagon.
After snapping his leg in 2013 against Chris Weidman, Silva’s final run with the company was less the fruitful, to be sure. Aside from a near finish against Michael Bisping in a fight he would later lose, and a decision win over Nick Diaz later overturned to a No Contest, Silva’s lone win would come against Derek Brunson in 2017.
Still, hearing UFC brass including Dana White dismiss him clearly bothered one of the most gracious fighters to compete for the promotion.
“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,” Silva stated. White and co were “talking a lot of sh*t about me,” he added, “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,” he continued. “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.”
While Silva is done with mixed martial arts, it’s expected that he’ll continue to compete in boxing. He currently has a bout lined up with another former MMA fighter, Bruno Machado, on May 14.
