…so said Silva’s manager Ed Soares, when asked by ProMMARadio about a potential Georges St. Pierre/Anderson Silva superfight:

“That sounds great, I think GSP is an incredible fighter. But I think GSP needs to prove himself. He still hasn’t had a successful title defense (at 170 lbs.). I don’t really feel that he deserves (a Silva fight) yet. Go defend your title a few times and then we’ll talk.”

The thing is, St. Pierre has proven himself many times over to be an elite-level fighter, and Soares is veering uncomfortably close to Juanito Ibarra territory, wild statement-wise. But what makes his dismissal of GSP particularly ironic is that Spider’s next fight is likely going to be against Patrick Cote, who doesn’t deserve to be in the same room as Silva or GSP. With Yushin Okami suffering a broken hand, Cote is really and truly next in line for a title shot; that little shitshow could happen at UFC 88 (September 6th, Atlanta).

A relatively one-dimensional striker, Cote doesn’t bring any more to the table than James Irvin did, and their bout will almost certainly be another brief exhibition for Silva. The silver lining is that with this belt-defense obligation out of the way quickly, Silva will be free to “test the waters” at light-heavyweight again — and he does plan on fighting at least one more time before the end of the year.

Sort of related: “UFC Silva vs. Irvin” was a ratings smash. The broadcast averaged 3.1 million viewers, peaked at 3.8 million viewers, and according to SpikeTV, beat all basic cable and broadcast networks in that timeslot for the “males 18-49″ and “males/females 18-34″ demographics.

Barring any unexpected defeats or freak injuries, Anderson Silva will fight at least three more times by the year’s end, Dana White said in a press conference held yesterday. First, of course, is his light-heavyweight debut against James Irvin at UFN 14 on July 19th. Said White:

“If everything goes well, he wants to move back to 185 and fight Sept. 6 in Atlanta [at UFC 88], probably against Yushin Okami, then he wants to fight again two months later.”

And who might that next opponent be?

“(Ricardo Almeida) and Patrick Cote are going to fight on Saturday night and see who’s next in line for Anderson Silva’s 185-pound title,” said White.

The long-term plan is for Silva to keep testing the waters at 205, in preparation for an eventual run at the title. And for the first time in the UFC’s history, one of its champions would be allowed to hold two titles at the same time. “Normally I won’t let guys do stuff like that because it’s just…stupid,” White said. “I’ll let Anderson Silva do it.”

Anyway, this has to be bittersweet for Almeida and Cote. The good news is that the winner of their fight is getting an immediate title shot; the bad news, of course, is that the winner is slated to get the worst beating of his life in November. I’m not saying that throwing the fight intentionally and leaving the country for a while would be the best idea, but it’s probably not the worst either.

(Props: MMA Weekly)

(Photo courtesy of myspace.com/nathandiazmma.)

The UFC’s next “Fight Night” card on SpikeTV will reportedly go down September 17th at the Omaha Civic Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska, and matchups are beginning to be sorted out. TUF 5 winner and Stockton-repper Nate Diaz has agreed to fight Josh “The Dentist” Neer in a lightweight bout on the main card; Diaz has gone 4-0 in the UFC since his reality show stint, including a legendary no-hands triangle choke victory over Kurt Pellegrino at UFN 13, while Neer (24-6-1, 3-3 UFC) last defeated Din Thomas by decision at the same event, and holds notable wins over Joe Stevenson and Melvin Guillard.

Omaha’s own Houston Alexander is also expected to appear, taking on Eric Schafer. The fight marks Schafer’s return to the Octagon after picking up a couple of wins in the Gladiators Fighting Series organization; he’d previously dropped two in a row to Michael Bisping and Stephan Bonnar. A middleweight fight between Ed Herman and Alan Belcher has been rumored as well.

In other UFC news…

— Dana White has denied that his mind-blowing announcement is related to New York MMA regulation. Epic Fail averted, for now.

— BloodyElbow is floating a rumor that Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami could fight in October, at the UFC’s next U.K. show. We’d rather see the Spider in a light-heavyweight super-fight, but sure, why not, clean out the division once and for all.

— French welterweight David Baron has reportedly signed with the UFC. Baron is the former 168-pound champion of Shooto Europe who most recently pulled off a huge upset at Shooto Tradition 1 by submitting Hayato Sakurai in the first round.

(Yushin Okami)

Who Anderson Silva should fight next is current debate among MMA fans. Silva himself seems bored with the weak competition and has even got his eye on going toe-to-toe with champion – or ex-champion – boxers. On the MMA side of things, the name that keeps popping up to fight Silva is Yushin Okami, the middleweight that beat The Spider via disqualification a little over two years ago in a Rumble on the Rock tournament. Silva spoke to Sherdog recently – via his manager, Ed Soares – and is non too pleased with the Okami win.

Silva was dominating the fight. When Silva went to his back, Okami got in some of his best strikes of the bout. But an upkick from The Spider connected with Okami’s mug, sending the fighter back. Troy “Rude Boy” Mandaloniz held Silva back from exacting more pain to Okami. Why did “Rude Boy” hold Silva back, you ask? He was the ref for the match. That’ll for sure be a question in Trivial Pursuit: MMA, so remember it. Anyway, Okami couldn’t recover and the DQ gave him the win.

Silva has a different point of view:

“I feel it was a cheap, cowardly way of winning,” a pointed Silva says more than two years after the scrap. “People that were there saw that he was in the condition to come back and keep fighting, and he didn’t.”

Silva says he doesn’t “really think much of anything of Okami,” but the Brazilian was more poised when stuck under Henderson than he is when discussing the Japanese fighter.

“It wasn’t really a fight,” Silva describes the disqualification loss before adding that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Josh Koscheck vs. Dustin Hazelett, the best fight of the undercard. Awesome exchanges in the beginning, explosive finish at the end.

Andrei Arlovski vs. Jake O’Brien. Feel free to skip past the entire first round.

More fights after the jump…

(Okami: The new Ivan Drago)

Suki MMA has translated Yushin Okami’s latest blog post, in which the Japanese UFC middleweight contender gives his thoughts on UFC 81:

Minotauro was terrific. That sweep was artistic. I was amazed to see his mental strength and his submission techniques. I found a lot to learn from his fight. I was also surprised to see how quick Sylvia gave up and tapped out though. It seems the American style.

Oh, you bastard. I can only hope that the collective chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” fill Evan Tanner with enough patriotic fury to wipe the mat with Okami next month. First of all, giving up is not the American style. I think Okami was forgetting something when he wrote this blog post. Namely:

Flag-faced eagle speaks the truth! As Tom Petty has said many times before, you could stand us up at the gates of hell, but we, won’t back down. And by the way, using Tim Sylvia to represent the fighting spirit of our entire nation? Not cool.

Unrelated, but also notable on Suki’s blog: Shinya Aoki recently met with his tights designer, meaning that it won’t be long until his next fight. Yatta!

Evan Tanner’s fight against David Terrell at UFC 51 (2/5/05) was actually his second shot at a UFC championship belt — four years earlier he faced Tito Ortiz for the light heavyweight title, but was knocked out via slam after just 32 seconds. After working up a 6-1 record in his next UFC fights and dropping down to middleweight, he was given the chance to fight David Terrell for the vacant middleweight championship. Despite Terrell hanging off his neck for a full 30 seconds during the match, Tanner was able to slip the guillotine attempt and move on top of Terrell, where he ground-and-pounded his way to victory. Unfortunately, he lost his title to Rich Franklin four months later. Tanner returns to the Octagon at UFC 82, where he’ll face Yushin Okami.