Anderson Silva takes Lyoto Machida and 'Jacare' to task for saying they'd fight him

Anderson Silva

Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva doesn’t like to fight Brazilians, but he thinks there are a few fighters close to him who don’t feel the same way.

On Thursday Silva (33-6 MMA, 16-2 UFC) expressed frustration with Lyoto Machida (22-5 MMA, 14-5 UFC) and Ronaldo Souza (21-3 MMA, 4-0 UFC) for their words about a potential fight with him.

“‘Jacare’ is my friend, Lyoto’s my friend, but all the time the guys don’t talk the same as me,” Silva said during a conference call in support of his UFC 183 headliner opposite Nick Diaz. “When I go to talk to the media, I say, ‘I’m not going to fight Lyoto,’ because he’s my friend, and I’m not going to fight ‘Jacare,’ because he’s my friend. But when the guys go to talk to the media, Lyoto says, ‘I would go fight Anderson, because I fight. ‘Jacare,’ the same – ‘I would fight him, because I’m a fighter.’

Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza

“In my opinion, I don’t like the position of Lyoto and ‘Jacare’ because I don’t go and fight these guys, because I trained with Lyoto for a long time, and sometimes I trained with ‘Jacare.'”

Silva apparently took exception to a recent interview from Machida, in which he told Tatame that he would fight Silva “as a professional,” despite the ex-light heavyweight champ’s caution that such a scenario is “out of context” and “to me it isn’t going to happen, so I don’t like to talk about it.”

While “The Spider” wonders whether the media is inflating the drama of a potential matchup, he was dismayed his sometime-teammates even participated in the conversation.

“Yeah, absolutely (it makes me angry), because when I go to train with the guys, I go help them,” Silva said. “I go help the guys. I put 50 percent into helping the guys. When the guys talk like this, I’m very, very disappointed.

“Lyoto is my friend, ‘Jacare’ trains with me, and I don’t like to fight Brazilian guys. I don’t like it. I understand this is a sport, and guys stay in the UFC for fights, but I don’t like to fight Brazilian guys.”

Silva, though, might be getting ahead of himself. Souza, for his part, has said he hopes the UFC never puts them in the cage together.

“Anderson is someone I don’t want to fight,” he said. “He’s someone who’s in my camp; he’s my friend. He helps me, and I help him. So I wouldn’t be a good character if I said I wanted to fight him.”

However, Souza ultimately deferred matchmaking decisions to the promoter, which is exactly what Silva did when talking about recent news that he will fight for a title if he gets past Diaz (26-9 MMA, 7-6 UFC) on Jan. 31 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena.

“I work for the UFC, so I’m part of the UFC family,” Silva said. “It’s (UFC President) Dana (White’s) decision when I go to fight, and I go and prepare for a fight. So, this isn’t a good question for me; it’s a question for Dana.”

Lyoto Machida

In previous interviews, Silva has himself vacillated on whether or not he would fight Machida or Souza if the UFC forced the matchup.

“I don’t want to fight a friend, mainly Lyoto, but if I in the future I have credentials to fight for the belt and we have to fight, we will fight,” he told Globo this past March.

Six months earlier, however, Silva said of a potential matchup with his sometime training partners, “I’m a honorable man, I would never fight against “Jacare” or Lyoto, whether they are in my division or not… . If we had to do this, I would give up from my belt.”

While a lot of information seems to get lost in translation when the Brazilian trio talks to the media, it’s clear that they can agree on one thing: They will fight each other if forced to, but they won’t like it.

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