In a recent interview, Anderson Silva touched on the offer he received to return to MMA action on MVP’s Rousey vs. Carano card scheduled for this May on Netflix.
Silva (34-11) who had his last MMA fight back in 2020, has since transitioned to a career in boxing, appearing on two cards promoted by MVP including his 2022 unanimous decision loss to the promotion’s co-founder Jake Paul.
Defending the middleweight title a consecutive ten times during his sixteen-fight UFC win streak between 2006 and 2012, ‘The Spider’ sticks out to most MMA fans as one of the greatest 185-pound titleholders of all time. For his years of service, Silva was honored to receive an induction into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2023.
During the interview this week, Silva revealed he turned down the offer from MVP because of his ongoing training to become a police officer. He also indicated that he doesn’t have any interest in a return to MMA and wants to focus on boxing in the future.
“Nakisa [Bidarian] invited me to come to fight MMA or kickboxing, but because I’m in this process now [becoming a police officer], to study, to keep my mind work on the one thing, I just say, ‘Oh, I can’t this time.’ But when I finish the whole thing, probably I have one or two more fights, only boxing. I’m not have a mind anymore to train in MMA—it’s just too hard for me to back to train MMA. Of course, I train jiu jitsu everyday. I train in boxing two days a week. But [sigh] MMA, no, not anymore.”