Miami — A barking Jean Silva appeared at Wednesday’s UFC 314 media day, though the target of Silva’s antagonistic tactics wasn’t actually present.
That would be opponent Bryce Mitchell, who has courted controversy throughout 2025 and did so again on Wednesday. At one point during Silva’s media day session, which came much later than Mitchell’s, Silva began to bark at a voice outside the media room— one he believed might be the Arkansas native known as “Thug Nasty.”
Turns out, it was Daniel Cormier. Who definitely isn’t a featherweight.
A funny moment in the end. Still, the tension is high ahead of the featherweight showdown. And while Silva has insisted he doesn’t hate, and doesn’t want to hurt Mitchell, who expressed a fondness for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler earlier this year, he does see contradictions in the American’s beliefs.
“I’m coming off of an Armenian party in my last fight [against Melsik Baghdasaryan] into a Hillbilly party for this fight,” Silva (15-2) said on Wednesday, before referencing the “demonic” dreams Mitchell claims to have had in the weeks ahead of UFC 314. “Anyone can dream, and apparently he’s been dreaming about me for a while.”
Still, Silva pointed out, “I never disrespected him as a fighter, or his skills or his abilities. He’s fought really tough guys in the UFC. He can believe whatever he wants to believe, but it actually upsets me that he doesn’t see the position that he’s in as a public person, and doesn’t mind his words and disrespects people and children and everything else. He talks a lot of about God, but he wears a t-shirt with God with guns around it. So that makes no sense to me. It’s a lot of contradictions.”
When it comes to Mitchell’s views on Hitler, including the claim that one of history’s most reviled human beings was once a “good guy to go fishing with,” Silva is hoping it’s all an act.
“I really hope that he’s just trying to sell the fight and promote the fight, because some of the opinions and beliefs that he’s got about the guy with the moustache [Hitler] is just incredible,” said Silva. “I don’t even know what to say, but I don’t think he’s taking it personally that hard. Because for him to take it personally I think I would need to speak about God, and I’m not going to speak badly about God.”
Watch Jean Silva’s full UFC 314 media day appearance above.
