UFC President Dana White was on the Jim Rome show to promote the UFC on Fox event that will take place this Saturday, but shared this little nugget when Rome asked if Anderson Silva was going to fight Chael Sonnen next:
It’s the fight that everybody wants to see, people wanna see Chael versus Anderson. Anderson is in this position where he feels like this guy[Sonnen] is so disrespectful, he doesn’t want to give him a shot and everything else. But, Anderson will end up fighting Chael Sonnen. The answer is yes.
The Chael Sonnen fight is THE money fight for Anderson Silva. There is not a bigger fight out there for him, and there are no legitimate contenders to face besides Chael Sonnen at the present time. UFC middleweight Mark Munoz called out Silva after his last win against Chris Leben. It’s true that Mark Munoz ran through Chris Leben at UFC 138, but Munoz only has one win against a top ten middleweight in Demian Maia. The first fight between Silva and Sonnen helped generate somewhere around 600,000 PPV buys. Not to mention the trash talk that Sonnen has done and will continue to do leading up to this fight just as he did the last time. Sonnen put up such a strong performance in a losing effort it goes without saying that fans will be interested in seeing if the first time was a fluke or not.
The second fight between these two will more than likely surpass the 600,000 PPV buys of the first fight depending on the supporting cast of this future card. If everything is set up correctly, this second fight could easily do 750,000 PPV buys or more which would be the highest number for any PPV event headlined by Silva. Also, the other win-win deal with this rematch is that should Silva lose to Sonnen he would almost certainly be guaranteed an immediate third fight because of his long time dominance as champion which would net another huge payday for a fighter who says all he wants is big fights.
This fight should be booked ASAP.
HT: Fightline