Anderson Silva gives up on fighting at UFC 212 in Brazil

It looks like former middleweight champion Anderson Silva will not be fighting in his home country of Brazil at UFC 212, which takes place on June 3.

Silva was scheduled to fight Kelvin Gastelum on the Rio de Janeiro fight card. However, Gastelum tested positive for marijuana after his fight with Vitor Belfort and his first round TKO win was overturned to a no contest. With the positive test, Gastelum was pulled from the fight with Silva as he was suspended for 90 days.

Silva went on The MMA Hour last week to campaign for a fight against the #1 UFC ranked middleweight Yoel Romero. Silva and Romero both said that they would fight one another but only if an interim middleweight title was on the line. Silva went as far as to say that he would retire if he did not get the interim title fight against Romero at UFC 212. UFC President Dana White didn’t seem to budge on Silva’s demands and said that if any fighter is even considering retiring, they probably should.

It sounds like Silva has given up on trying to get a fight for Rio and is “disassembling” his fight camp, according to what he said on Sunday in an Instagram live video via UOL, translated by MMA Junkie.

“I really wanted to fight in Brazil, my country, but it’s not going to happen,” Silva said during the live video, which is no longer viewable. “I want to apologize for this. I really wanted to fight here, but it didn’t happen. I think I was hurt in this, but that’s it.”

Do you think Anderson Silva will be hanging up his gloves and retiring with not being able to fight in Rio de Janeiro? Or, will we see “The Spider” fight again at a later date? Let’s get your thoughts in the comment section!

on 5/8/2017.