White: Silva motivated for Weidman, but UFC will ‘talk about’ Roy Jones Jr. fight

The questions started immediately after Anderson Silva was knocked out by Chris Weidman in July.

The longtime champ and pound-for-pound king had barely hit the canvas when critics were dogging him for clowning around against Weidman in the cage – clowning, they said, that allowed Weidman to drill Silva for an upset knockout.

After the fact, Silva has maintained he was merely fighting as he always does – and that a simple footwork mistake was the difference for Weidman in the UFC 162 main event. And Silva (33-5 MMA, 16-1 UFC) maintains that won’t happen again when he rematches Weidman (10-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) less than three weeks from now at UFC 168, which takes place at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

UFC President Dana White tends to believe Silva when he says it was a technique goof more than acting like a goof against Weidman, ducking and dodging and mugging.

“I’ve talked to him at length about it, and he’s got this thing where his foot was in the wrong position, and had his foot been in a different position that would have never happened,” White recently told “FOX Sports Live” on FOX Sports 1. “I mean, how do you question Anderson Silva? The guy’s a master. He loses one fight, the critics dive in and start ripping him apart, like they know what the hell they’re talking about. Look what the guy has accomplished in his career. Maybe it was one little foot movement. We’ll find out Dec. 28.”

But White also acknowledges that in some ways, Silva might have been able to avoid the upset loss – or at least avoid many of the critics – had he not been “messing around.”

So which version of the Brazilian is going to be in Las Vegas? The one who smashed every UFC titleholder record, or the one who found himself waking up wondering when the lights went out?

White believes it’ll be the former.

“That’s the big question of this fight,” White said. “Everybody’s asking which Anderson Silva is going to show up. Is he going to mess around like he did last time? What’s he going to do? Who knows. I can tell you this: I think he’s going to show up and be focused, and be as sharp as he’s ever been and try to win this fight. That’s what I think he’s going to do.”

And if that happens, maybe the UFC boss will be willing to consider a crossover fight that Silva and professional boxer Roy Jones Jr. have been talking about for years.

Jones, 44, has 64 pro fights. But the one both he and Silva have been pining after is a boxing match against each other. And Jones recently told Boxing News he believes that fight will happen if Silva beats Weidman to recapture the UFC’s middleweight title.

“He said that’s his lifelong dream,” Jones said. “We’ve got to make that happen. If (Silva) beats Weidman, then we’ll do a boxing match, which is what he wants to do. … If he beats Weidman, I’ve got to be ready for it because he’s going to be coming for me – and I want to be ready when he comes for me. I want to give him what he wants.”

So how serious of a possibility is that? White has been answering questions about such a fight’s plausibility for years, but now it seems like it’s something he might consider – especially since Jones is planning to be cageside a week after he fights Zine Eddine Benmakhlouf for the WBU cruiserweight title in Russia.

“These two drive me crazy. They drive me crazy,” White said. “First of all, Roy Jones Jr. is a longtime friend of mine. When I was a 19-year-old kid in the boxing business, Roy Jones was very good to me. So I’m in this position where I feel like Roy wants to fight him, he wants to fight Roy – I feel like I’m in this position to try to make both of these guys happy. But it drives me crazy.

“I would love Roy Jones Jr. to focus on his next opponent and Anderson to focus on his. We’ll talk about all this stuff. I know Roy’s coming to the fight – we’ll see what happens.”

For the latest on UFC 168, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

(Pictured: Anderson Silva)