Didn’t I mention yesterday, during the middle of all this furor surrounding the Chuck vs Wandy announcements that I wasn’t holding my breath and wouldn’t believe this fight was happening until it was officially announced. Well, yeah, looks like that was a good perspective to take.
Kevin Iole at Yahoo Sports, who seems to have quickly become Dana White’s first go-to choice in the media, is reporting that the Wanderlei Silva vs Chuck Liddell fight is over and the deadline passed with no fight contract being signed by July 11 (yesterday). I’ve never heard of a July 11 deadline for this match to be made, but who knows what the real story is.
White said he had reached terms for Liddell, arguably the UFC’s most popular fighter and its recently deposed 205-pound champion, to meet the Brazilian Silva in a highly anticipated bout at UFC 76.
But White said Wednesday he was told by a member of Silva’s Chute Box team that Silva did not want to fight Liddell. White said the deadline for having the fight made was Wednesday.
“This is the worst news I could have possibly gotten,” White said. “It’s horrendous. I have been trying to make this fight for six years. I have done everything in my power I could do over the last six years to make this fight and it’s still not happening. I just don’t see it happening now.”
“This just happened (Wednesday afternoon) and I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” White said. “We’re trying to figure it out. It’s not a fun time right now.”
He said he’s not certain if he’ll keep Liddell on that card and match him with another opponent. A possibility would be to bring in more fighters who are under contract with Pride and have them fight in the main event.
White said he planned to go ahead with Rua against Machida and wasn’t at the moment considering a Rua-Liddell bout.
“We haven’t really had enough time to figure this out because it all just came down,” White said. “It’s been a bad day ever since I heard that.”
Sounds like it could all be a big smokescreen and a bunch of Dana White’s crap if you ask me. Seems strange that all this talk arises yesterday and Wanderlei is personally announcing the fight on this supposed deadline-day, and then the day after Dana White says the fight will never happen.
Like I said yesterday, I’m sick of all this nonsense with the Chuck vs Wandy fight, and I’m sure most of you are as well. Whether this September at UFC 76 or anytime after that, Chuck and Wandy will fight and then we can stop talking about it.
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Tags: UFC, MMA, UFC 76, Chuck Liddell, Wanderlei Silva
