Former UFC champion Tim Sylvia has been on a crusade to return to the UFC. Sylvia is one step closer, but will have to make a pit stop in Strikeforce first. Unfortunately the former champ has a heck of a road block lying ahead on September 29.
MMAJunkie.com is reporting that the former heavyweight champion will fight recent Strikeforce heavyweight Grand-Prix tournament winner Daniel Cormier in a fight tentatively scheduled for September 29.
“I don’t even know what Tim Sylvia’s done. The last Tim Sylvia fight I saw, he got knocked out by a boxer. What has he done since then?”
This is one of the biggest problem critics have with White. White is honest to a fault. He pulled the same antics a few years back with Tito Ortiz when Ortiz was nearing the end of a deal. White would continually criticize Ortiz, while trying to promote him in an upcoming fight. I remember interviewing Ortiz around that time who was just stunned that White would be so vocally critical of anyone he was trying to promote. Welcome back Tim Sylvia.
The Tim Sylvia comeback is a fun story. Sylvia left the UFC and hit rock bottom after being KO’d in a video that went viral against boxer Ray Mercer in 9 seconds. Sylvia has since rebounded and has gone 3-0 in his last three fights. Sylvia recently took to Twitter and began campaigning to get back into the UFC. Sylvia even posted training videos online to prove that he was in shape, a criticism that Sylvia has heard (and with good reason) in recent years. While Strikeforce is not the UFC, it is nice to see the guy who was once the heavyweight UFC kingpin get another crack in a major promotion and probably his best pay day in years
Unfortunately that is where the fun ends. If you watched one Tim Sylvia fight you have watched one boring fight too many. Not all of Sylvia’s fights were boring, but quite frankly most were. Sylvia was the kind of a fighter that fans hated, but not in the money-drawing way. Sylvia will need to come out with an aggressive game plan against Cormier to silence the growing number of haters who have zero interest in watching Sylvia back in the UFC.
All are easier said than done against Cormier.
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