The UFC middleweight king, Anderson Silva spoke with TATAME.com in an exclusive interview and spoke about his future in the event, the possible fight against Randy Couture, his next title defense and the end of his polemic with former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva.
You’ve showed a lot of superiority in your last fights. Do you think the level of your opponents decreased recently?
No, man, I think all the UFC fighters are good. Everybody who fights there is a high level athlete, but we train a lot, study a lot… My life is that, I just do this, so I have to do it really well. I try to do my best, and I think the result is being positive because of the training, the work of all my team, my dedication to training…
Everybody is wondering who’ll be the next contender to your title. Do you think Dan Henderson and Nate Marquardt should fight each other before that?
I don’t think anything, man. Whoever comes, I’ll fight. They both are great fighters, are doing their jobs too, so I’ll fight anyone.
You want to do your next fight at 185 or 205?
I don’t know too… Wherever they (UFC) put me, I’ll go. My last fight was at 205, so i think the next one will be for the title. Let’s wait and see what they want.
Randy Couture said he’s moving to light heavyweight and he wanted to fight against you. How do you think would be a fight against him?
It’s hard to say, it’s a tough fight. We’re training here to fight the best. Life is made of challenges. It’d be a honor to fight the best of the world, and I hope I can fight the best until the end of my career. I don’t have much to talk, we’re working hard here.
In Rodrigo Minotauro’s last training video at TATAME TV, we noticed that you were imitating Randy Couture during a sparring training with him. If you ever fight one day, it’d already know his moves, right?
We have a study from all UFC fighters, from 170 to the heavyweights. We have videos f any fighters, even those who aren’t so recognized. We try to study a lot all the games, because we have to be prepared if one day we have to fight them. From 170 to heavyweights, we see everybody.
Watching your archive, which names do you think the fans don’t know much, but you think has potential to be on the tops one day?
There are a lot of names to say, many fighters and al of them has their qualities. We have to respect, everybody is trained and are dangerous. Coming from victory or loss, they are moving on and trying to be a champion one day, and we have to be prepared to don’t be surprised.
At the UFC back stages, you and Wanderlei Silva met and ended your problems, and I heard you two could even train together?
It never happened any problem, it was a misunderstanding. We spoke, everything is ok now… If he needs my help, I’ll help him like I help all my friends. We’re together. If I can help him, like I always did…
And what you thought about his new face surgery?
Man, he’s more handsome (laughs)… I said to him Wanderlei, you’re much more handsome… If you had a long hair and a pretty mouth, you’d be like Angelina Jolie (laughs). But he’s ok, he did that surgery because of a nose problem and that’s important. The rest is rest, the guys joke with him and that’s normal.
*Editor’s Note: interview is translated from Portroguese*





