Anything is possible in 2025, including an unexpected boxing trilogy bout between former UFC middleweight champions Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman.
Silva’s post-UFC chapter of his combat sports career has already seen him box his all-time rival, Chael Sonnen, in another out-of-the-blue trilogy bout in June 2024. Now, the man who dethroned “The Spider” from atop the middleweight heap 12 years ago, Weidman, gets his turn. They’ll compete in a 205-pound match on Netflix as part of the Jake Paul vs. Gervonta Davis undercard on Nov. 14 in Miami, Florida.
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The matchup came as a big surprise to many, but the pair of former rivals revealed in a virtual face-to-face Wednesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that it was discussed as far back as two years ago. So once the idea was revived by MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian for Netflix, both men jumped at the chance.
Weidman: “I got a call from [Silva’s] manager, again asking if I was interested in fighting Anderson. She said there was a chance of fighting on this Netflix card with Jake Paul and Gervonta Davis. I was like, ‘Let’s do it, it will be fun.’
“There’s not too many people that I would really be interested in fighting other than Anderson. We have a good history, I have a lot of respect for him. I think one of the best martial artists of our time, lifelong martial artist, and he’s a true challenge. He’s an amazing boxer. He’s under-appreciated as a boxer, so I think it’s an awesome challenge. That’s what I’d love to do is compete against the best guys, so I’d love the opportunity.”
Silva: “It’s so interesting because the people asked me about,’Oh, [are] you interested to fight [on] the next Jake fight, on the same card?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m so interested, but who’s my opponent? I don’t know.’
“I talked to Nakisa and Nakisa said, ‘Oh, I try to make the good fight that makes sense for the sport. You and Chris Weidman.’ Wow. That’s great. It’s a good challenge for us. Especially for [us to] show the respect [we have] for boxing. Chris and I can do the good fight for the fans, for Netflix, and this is very good for us. It’s amazing.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise at this point is the fact that both men are still competing. But Silva, 50, and Weidman, 41, both indicated that they’ll have more in the tank after they meet on Nov. 15. Silva was adamant that he plans to keep fighting, while Weidman noted that he’s loved focusing only on his boxing.
Unlike Silva’s trilogy boxing match with Sonnen, which resulted in a draw and was essentially a low-powered sparring match, Weidman is the one who comes into November’s bout up in the series, owning two wins over Silva from their UFC days. Of course, arguably none were bigger than when Weidman knocked out Silva in Round 2 of their meeting at UFC 162 in 2013. The loss ended Silva’s historic reign as the UFC’s feared 185-pound champion, and simultaneously snapped his record 16-fight UFC win streak.
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To come full circle like this, even if in a different sport like boxing, is still quite the moment.
Weidman: “It’s definitely surreal. Anderson changed my life. He gave me the opportunity to fight for that belt, I made the best of it. It changed my life forever. I owe him a lot. That’s why a part of it, I get a phone call to fight Anderson Silva — there’s no way I’m turning it down. I respect him a lot, and I’m going to go in there and give it my best. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Just to share that boxing ring with him is going to be tons of fun.”
Silva: “I’m so happy to do that, because the people think about us — when you finish your career inside UFC, you can’t fight anymore. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, because [you’re] old, and this and that.’ But it’s not. I think Chris and I prove it’s not. This game [will] change your life when you love something. I keep training hard everyday. I keep doing my best. I help [my son] Khalil to train in jiu-jitsu. I help [my other son] Gabriel when he fights kickboxing, when he fights boxing. That’s the next level for us. The people need to respect that.”
Even after all these years, and subsequent MMA successes after his two wins over Silva, Weidman finds himself as the +205 betting underdog against the all-time great. Silva, on the other hand, enters the match as -290 favorite, having competed in boxing five times since he left the UFC in late 2020. Silva notably upset Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in 2021 before losing to the aforementioned Paul in 2022.
“I’m not surprised,” Weidman said of the odds. “I thought it would be worse, to be honest. I’ve never boxed before. People have me as a wrestler — and Anderson, I don’t think he gets enough credit for how good of a boxer he is. He’s a very clean, crisp boxer. He looks great. So I’m not surprised. There’s a lot of unknowns with me.”
Weidman’s UFC run ended much more recently than his counterpart; he parted ways with the promotion earlier this year after losing to Eryk Anders at UFC 310. Weidman originally intended to continue his MMA career and inked a deal to compete in another rematch — against another ex-champ, Luke Rockhold — for a pipe-dream collision with GFL, however the company collapsed before its debut event.
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In hindsight, Weidman was as underestimated as any challenger in MMA history heading into his first title bout against Silva. With a mere 9-0 pro record at the time, the gulf in experience between the two was quite frankly otherworldly. And although Weidman portrayed an unbreakable demeanor in the lead-up to UFC 162, he recalled struggling mightily behind-the-scenes as he reckoned with what laid ahead.
“It was months and months of battling the demons of doubt,” Weidman said. “When you’re going against Anderson Silva in his prime, nobody had beaten him yet. He was so good. You watch his highlights, you’re watching a guy that we’ve never seen anything like that before, what he was able to do inside the Octagon. He was so comfortable. Putting down his hands, messing with people, letting people punch him. He was just absorbing those hits so well and finishing fights against world-class fighters. So overcoming the doubts, really within myself — you had the whole world doubting the idea of me being able to beat him, but it was a constant fight.
“It was beating those demons every day. When those negative thoughts would come into my head, I was constantly beating them out until I was positive in my mind. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of mental work to walk into that Octagon with that same confidence, because you can do all that mental work beforehand, but it all comes down to how you feel in the Octagon. So it was really the same thing making that walk, being in front of him, not putting him on too much of a pedestal and just not over-respecting him. And going out there and believing in myself.
“It was a very hard obstacle,” he added, “but I was a man on a mission. I had to win that belt.”
Anderson Silva infamously taunted Chris Weidman early and often in their first bout before Weidman’s second-round knockout.
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
The rematch was a much more horrific scene. After a dominant opening round in which he leaned on his decorated wrestling background, Weidman checked a leg kick that wound up snapping Silva’s leg in half. It was a gruesome injury — and one that implausibly also occurred to Weidman eight years later.
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All these years later, Silva assures he never fought Weidman out of disrespect. His in-cage antics were just part of his style, and from Weidman’s view, they were a tough obstacle to have to overcome.
Silva: “All my opponents, I respect. When I fight with Chris, I don’t do nothing different than my other fights, and Chris [was] doing a good job. He studied my movements, and took the best shot and won the fight. But when people ask me, ‘You don’t think you [didn’t] respect your opponents?’ I say, ‘No, I respect my opponent. But in training, that’s my style [of] fighting. I can’t change that. I change that, who I am. [At] the time, Chris win. He did a good job.”
Weidman: “Even though I won that fight, [Silva’s theatrics were] getting to me. It gets uncomfortable when you see someone on the level of him, and [it] makes you feel that insecure that he’s that confident that he can do that.
“In the second fight, obviously the leg break was awful and a terrible thing, but before that, he had so much backlash, especially from Brazil, for being knocked out while his hands were down, while he was taunting, that it kind of forced him to fight very traditional in the second fight, with his hands up and typical kickboxing. I felt like it was easier for me to see things coming, as opposed to when he was doing his thing and just free-flowing and putting his hands down.”
