Anderson Silva does need surgery after all

I’m getting a little sick of the flip-flopping coming out of the UFC lately. Dan Henderson will fight Anderson Silva next. No he won’t. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will star in The A-Team. No he won’t. Yes he will. Silva needs elbow surgery. No he doesn’t. Yes he does.

That last one seems to be the case. While the middleweight champ denied surgery rumours last week, wondering who hurt him, UFC president Dana White confirmed at Thursday’s UFC 103 pre-fight press conference that he does in fact need surgery to remove bone spurs:

“Contrary to whatever the hell [Silva] is saying, he’s not 200 percent healthy. He’s having some bone spurs removed from his elbow, which is a simple little procedure that happens, but you’ve got to have recovery time.”

White went on to explain that heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar had recently undergone the same procedure.

As for Silva’s return, White says he wants him to finish cleaning out the middleweight division, something White figures will require two more fights, before Silva vacates the title to attack the light heavyweight division. In the meantime, White is trying to persuade Dan Henderson to fight Nate Marquardt to determine a true middleweight top contender.

And about that talked about Silva vs. Frank Mir heavyweight bout, White wants nothing to do with it:

“Oh, hell no. That’s BJ Penn craziness. He’ll never fight heavyweight here. That’s insane. Well, I guess if he annihilated the entire light heavyweight division, which is a tall fucking order – you’d have a lot of work to do because that thing is stacked. It would take him three years to do that.”

Of course, with Silva having just three fights remaining on his contract I’m pretty sure White would be happy to extend it for several more fights over three years no matter what weight class Silva wants to fight in.