Dana White has an answer for the biggest fight the UFC never made. MMA Sucka reported that the UFC boss explained why Georges St-Pierre vs. Anderson Silva never happened, and the outlet summed it up with one blunt line: “One of Them Didn’t Want It.”
That’s the core of what’s been reported. The coverage available doesn’t say which of the two legends White meant, so I’m not going to fill in the blank for you. People have been arguing about this one in bars for years. They can argue a little longer.
The timing is hard to miss. White’s explanation surfaced on the day of UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden, an arena tied to both men in very different ways.
St-Pierre’s late-career highlight happened there. At UFC 217 he returned from an extended layoff and beat middleweight champion Michael Bisping to win his second UFC title. That fight nearly got overshadowed on the same card by Rose Namajunas’s upset of Joanna Jędrzejczyk, which tells you what kind of night it was. Yahoo Sports cited that GSP comeback this week as a model for Amanda Nunes, alongside Jon Jones’s return at UFC 285.
Silva’s New York connection is the painful kind. Chris Weidman, the Long Island fighter who took his title, had a day named after him back home for it. MMA Mania brought that upset up again in its Gane vs. Hokit preview Saturday, pointing out that Weidman flatlined Silva with only two prior knockout wins on his record.
Two of the most important names of their era, both with history in the Garden, and never once in the same cage.
What’s next
The St-Pierre comparison gets tested tonight. Nunes, back after more than three years away, challenges Kayla Harrison for the bantamweight title in the UFC 334 co-main. Nunes has won 14 of her last 15 fights and retired after defending against Irene Aldana at UFC 289. Harrison hasn’t fought in 18 months, since beating Julianna Pena for the belt at UFC 316, and a neck surgery pushed this fight back from UFC 324.
The main event is heavyweight, which is how it should be at MSG. Ciryl Gane defends his title for the first time against Josh Hokit, who is 4-0 in the UFC and undefeated. FanDuel has Gane at -210 and Hokit at +168. The main card starts at 9 p.m. ET on Paramount+.
My take: “One of them didn’t want it” settles exactly nothing until somebody puts a name on it, and in the reporting so far nobody has. What it does confirm is the worst version of the story, that this fight died over one guy’s reluctance and not over money or a broken hand or a bad weight cut. The UFC has spent a decade selling November in the Garden as its big night. A GSP vs. Silva main event would have been the biggest of them all, and we got a one-line explanation instead.
