Anderson Silva Takes Jon Jones' Spot Against Daniel Cormier at UFC 200 on Extremely Short Notice

Anderson Silva will fight light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier at UFC 200 in a non-title fight. The fight story was first broken by Brazilian outlet Globo on Thursday, but was quickly debunked by UFC President Dana White. (Gregard Mousasi and Dan Henderson had also volunteered.)

Per @danawhite via text, reports of Silva vs. Cormier “not true."
— John Morgan (@MMAjunkieJohn) July 7, 2016

Silva, 41, will step in on 2-days notice to replace Jon Jones after the interim LHW champion failed a drug test. Silva hopes Jones isn’t mad he took his place at UFC 200.

Silva was scheduled to fight Uriah Hall at UFC 198, but pulled out the week of the fight because of abdominal pain. He then went and had his gallbladder removed. That was 8 weeks ago. The recovery time for that surgery is 4-6 weeks. This is one of those fights that makes no sense, but it also makes so much sense because it is so awesome.

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Vale a pena ser um vencedor?Talvez sim, talvez não. Obviamente tudo tem um prazo de validade. A melhoria exige auto-consciência para saber quando acelerar seus esforços e quando simplesmente estacioná-los. Mas aqui na MUAY THAI COLLEGE Nos treinamos até que seja impossível dar errado. E nunca estacionamos, pois a vida é como água, se ficar parada apodrece Fica a dica!! Vegas aí vamos nós ???????????????????????????

A post shared by Anderson "The Spider" Silva (@spiderandersonsilva) on Jul 7, 2016 at 2:12pm PDT

Silva is 0-3 with 1 no contest since beating Stephan Bonnar in October 2012. He is 3-0 in the UFC at light heavyweight.