Dana White has revealed what happened with Tim Sylvia’s aborted Strikeforce signing.
Former UFC champion Sylvia had been reported as being lined up to face Daniel Cormier in Strikeforce next, but at the last minute there was some confusion and an expected official announcement never materialised.
Sylvia then went online to explain that he had been promised the fight and had been in training only to learn, via online reports, that Cormier was now set to face Frank Mir instead. White was interviewed this week prior to tomorrow night’s Shogun vs. Vera event and gave a very terse explanation.
“Shelby had started moving down the road on a deal with Sylvia and I wasn’t on board. Neither was Lorenzo,” he said, before moving on to a different topic.
For those who don’t know, Sylvia is not on the Christmas card list at Zuffa HQ after bailing out of his UFC contract to go and sign for Affliction back when the clothing company went into running its own MMA shows in 2008.
Sylvia had requested release from his contract and was granted it, but he hadn’t told the UFC that he intended to sign with Affliction immediately. When he did – and was subsequently beaten quickly by Fedor Emelianenko – the UFC executives were furious.
And so Sylvia finds himself on the blacklist until today. However, his crushing disappointment has been alleviated by an offer from ONE FC, which he has accepted. And so in October he will rematch Andrei Arlovski for a fourth time. Three of those fights were under the UFC banner, this one is on the other side of the world. But the build-up should be interesting, because the two genuinely hate each other.
