Belfort: Out of Place?
Jake Rossen Jun 2, 2010
Finally ready to return after an injury kept him from an April
fight against Anderson
Silva, Vitor
Belfort seems to be
expecting a title shot will still be on the table when he
returns in October. Unfortunately, unless the UFC wants to shelve
him indefinitely, that doesn’t seem like the most logical course of
action.
Silva fights Chael Sonnen in August: assuming the winner is injury-free, it’s doubtful either man would take a compressed training camp. (Sonnen probably would, but cooler heads should prevail.) That means Belfort is probably looking at a contender’s fight in the fall, which would hardly be unreasonable: while he had two nice wins outside of the UFC’s middleweight division, one win over Rich Franklin inside the UFC is a generous path to the belt.
Rematching Wanderlei Silva -- Belfort blitzed him 12 years ago -- is long, long overdue, but Silva seems to be enjoying a biannual fight schedule; Alan Belcher would be less engaging, but so long as Belfort fights, so much the better. Fighters make better athletes than they do doorstops.
Silva fights Chael Sonnen in August: assuming the winner is injury-free, it’s doubtful either man would take a compressed training camp. (Sonnen probably would, but cooler heads should prevail.) That means Belfort is probably looking at a contender’s fight in the fall, which would hardly be unreasonable: while he had two nice wins outside of the UFC’s middleweight division, one win over Rich Franklin inside the UFC is a generous path to the belt.
Rematching Wanderlei Silva -- Belfort blitzed him 12 years ago -- is long, long overdue, but Silva seems to be enjoying a biannual fight schedule; Alan Belcher would be less engaging, but so long as Belfort fights, so much the better. Fighters make better athletes than they do doorstops.
