Chris Weidman isn’t fighting Anderson Silva on the upcoming Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua card despite his best efforts after suffering an injury in training.
Originally scheduled in November on the card headlined by Paul against Gervonta “Tank” Davis, Weidman was strapping on the boxing gloves for the first time for a third encounter with Silva after they met twice previously in the UFC. Once the Paul vs. Tank fight was scrapped, Weidman still expected to clash with Silva when the new fight was announced
for Dec. 19 but then disaster struck.
“I didn’t think I could get hurt boxing.” Weidman explained on Instagram. “It’s so much easier on the body compared to MMA. Tore my bicep tendon throwing a left hook. There goes that tendon. I tried to push through. I tried to give it some rest. It was 95 percent torn and because there was a bit of tendon left, it was just too painful. I couldn’t get through it. I would have been better off if the thing was completely torn after the inflammation went down from that. It would have been a little bit weaker but I think I would have been able to fight and then get the surgery afterwards.
“But unfortunately, every time I would give it rest and try to give it a shot to train again, I would feel good shadow boxing and stuff and then as soon as I would speed up my punches, it was really bad pain and then I couldn’t even hold my arm up for defense anymore.”
The fight was supposed to serve as Weidman’s first action since briefly declaring his retirement from the UFC but then inking a deal to join the roster at the GFL. When the GFL effectively shut down operations when funding fell apart for the first two cards, which included Weidman facing Luke Rockhold in a rematch, the former UFC middleweight champion was just waiting on another opportunity to compete again.
That came with the offer to run it back with Silva in the boxing ring but now Weidman has undergone surgery to repair the damage on his torn bicep, which knocked him out of the fight in December.
“It sucks,” Weidman said. “It’s crazy how it happened. It looked like nothing. I was sparring some professional boxer and in the first one-minute, I threw not even a hard left hook and my bicep just popped.”
With Weidman out, Most Valuable Promotions inked a new fight with Silva now facing former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley in a boxing match scheduled on Dec. 19 in Miami.
Regardless of those results, Weidman says he’s still open to a future boxing match against Silva once he’s healthy enough to compete again.
“I hope it happens in the future,” Weidman said. “I was really excited. The boxing training was going well. Had a lot of fun doing it. Really fell in love with boxing so I’m hoping to get this thing healed up fast and get back into training and see if I could get that fight back with Anderson.”
