Does Anderson Silva still get to call his own shots in the UFC? He seems intent on finding out.

Anderson Silva is tired, bro. So very tired, bro.

You can tell because he kept saying it over and over during his appearance on “The MMA Hour” this week, the same appearance in which he seemed to offer the UFC an ultimatum: Either give him an interim middleweight title fight against Yoel Romero, or else lose him forever to the outer darkness of retirement.

“Trust me, I’m so tired,” Silva (34-8 MMA, 17-4 UFC) said. “I just talked to my team today, and I talked to my friends and my family. I’m tired. If nothing happens, if this fight doesn’t happen anymore in Brazil, I’m done. I won’t fight more. I’m done.”

It’s a very specific demand, with an equally specific threat attached to it, and that puts the UFC in a strange place.

On one hand, it’s a simple enough request. You know, relatively speaking. After all the years and all the memories Silva has given the UFC, carving his name into the record books as one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport, shouldn’t he get to call this one shot so late in his career?

Then again, UFC executives know how this works. You let one fighter bend you to his will with a retirement threat, and suddenly you’re buried in ultimatums. Next thing you know, everyone is tired, bro. If you don’t appease them with interim belts and custom matchups, they’ll all quit on the spot. Making fights and keeping them together (see also: the sad saga of Kelvin Gastelum) is hard enough as it is. Who needs to add to the headache?

But this is a problem at least partially of the UFC’s own making. What would make Silva think he could demand that the UFC yank a new belt out of the supply closet just so he’d have some hardware to fight for? Well, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. Even when there’s no real interim period to speak of, it hasn’t stopped the UFC from creating interim titles to help sell a fight card. So why can’t Silva insist on a new interim period that begins with him?

It’s the same with his proposed fight against Romero (12-1 MMA, 8-0 UFC). It might not make the most sense to match the division’s top contender against a guy who’s 1-4 with one no-contest in his last six fights, but since when are we slaves to logic when it comes to UFC matchmaking?

And come on, it’s not like it’s a bad fight. Romero’s one of the scariest men in the weight class that Silva dominated for nearly seven years. It seems like a tough draw for the current version of the former champ, but if that’s what he wants – and if he happens to be acting like a bit of a prima donna about it – why not give it to him? Just make sure the ambulance isn’t parked too far away when you do.

Still, you hear Silva saying over and over again how tired he is, how old and how totally over all the backroom politics of this sport he feels now, and you have to wonder what happens in the unlikely event that he not only gets the fight he wants, but actually wins it.

Does the 42-year-old version of Silva still want this life? Does he actually see himself defending that as-of-yet non-existent interim belt, or even unifying it with its much more genuine brother? Does he just want another trinket to add to the trophy case? Is he simply trying to feel relevant, flexing his muscles one last time to see if he still matters enough to make the UFC do his bidding?

All those possibilities seem equally plausible. Some of them might be co-existing in Silva’s mind at the moment. As for whether his all-or-nothing negotiating tactic will get him what he wants in the end, that’s where it gets tricky.

This isn’t the same UFC that Silva inked his last deal with. And he’s not the same Silva he used to be. A lot’s changed in the last couple years. Maybe one goal of taking himself hostage and issuing demands for his own release is to help Silva discover what, if anything, remains the same.

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