Former UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva has expressed an interest in the past about a boxing match against the legendary Roy Jones Jr.
Jones Jr. recent appeared on The Ask Gary Vee Show and said he is still interested in boxing the UFC star.
“I’m still trying to fight Anderson Silva right now. Me and Anderson Silva have been trying to fight way before Floyd Mayweather and McGregor ever thought about this. We’ve been trying to fight for nine years now and they would not let him get free to fight me. . . Me and him could have did this a long time ago and we were at the pinnacle of our careers when we first started talking about it so why they still won’t let us fight right now, I don’t know,” says Jones Jr.
Silva is currently awaiting punishment for his second failed drug test, which occurred just before a scheduled bout with Kelvin Gastelum at UFC Fight Night Shanghai.
The legendary boxer says the only real holdup to the potential super fight is that the UFC is blocking Silva from competing.
“He still wants to fight me and I still want to fight him,” said Jones Jr. “He has 14 professional boxing matches so the different thing about it is, he has boxing experience. So it’s conceivable that he could do it. Both of us want to fight right now still and the UFC won’t let him free to fight. I’m 48, going on 49 in January, and because of how big it is, and how big of an event it is, and I know what it means to him, I’m still willing to fight Anderson Silva tomorrow if he was free to do it.”
In an attempt to get the fight signed, the former UFC Middleweight Champion confirmed he still wants to box Jones Jr. through a post on Instagram:
While Silva and Jones Jr. clearly want the fight to take place, there has been no comment from the UFC about letting their fighter compete.
