UFC President Says Anderson Silva Back Fighting by Year’s End, Non-Committal on Trilogy

As gruesome and grizzly as Anderson Silva’s broken leg looked in his fight with Chris Weidman at UFC 168, as harrowing as the raw footage of the incident was in UFC president Dana White’s recent video blog, the former UFC middleweight champion simply suffered a broken bone that will heal.

And White says that the prognosis is that it will heal and Silva could be back in the Octagon by the end of 2014.

“What’s crazy about that injury is he will be walking without crutches in a few weeks, he will be training in less than six months, and he will be fighting by the end of the year,” White said on Monday’s edition of SportsNation on ESPN2.

“So if you blow your ACL out, you’re out for a year and three months. You break your leg in half; you’re back before the end of the year.”

His comments were directly in line with those of Silva’s manager, Jorge Guimaraes, who recently told MMAWeekly.com, “He’s sitting back right now. The guy is just thinking about other things, spending some time with his family here in Los Angeles. He feels good though.

“It’s gonna be a lot of physical therapy, but he’s in the right place. It might take a year, but I think no later than one year, he’ll be back.”

So does that mean if Weidman still holds the middleweight belt upon Silva’s return that a trilogy would be in order?

After all, Silva got knocked out in his first fight with Weidman and then suffered the devastating injury in the rematch. Generally, a trilogy isn’t immediately built when one fighter loses back-to-back fights to the other.

It’s unlikely that Silva would get another immediate shot at the title when he returns, and to be fair, he hasn’t asked for anything. As of right now, Silva has been focused on healing and spending time with his family.

White wouldn’t commit one way or the other, either, but sounded less than committed to the idea of Silva just jumping feet first back into the fire.

“He’s got to come back first,” said White. “Let him start training, see what happens, and then we’ll go from there.”