Perennial middleweight title contender Vitor Belfort has scored three knockouts at 185-pounds since losing to then-champ Anderson Silva at UFC 126, but looks like a title shot will elude him at least one more time.
“The Phenom” will take on two-time Strikeforce title challenger Tim Kennedy at an upcoming event in Brazil, according to UFC President Dana White during an interview with Ariel Helwani at the UFC on FOX 8 weigh-ins yesterday.
After Anderson Silva was brutally knocked out by Chris Weidman at UFC 162 earlier this month, Belfort began aggressively campaigning for a title shot.
Unfortunately for the Brazilian knockout artist, the UFC wasted little time in booking Silva vs. Weidman II for UFC 168, set for December 28 at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas, Nevada.
White has little sympathy for Belfort’s stance that he was the next rightful contender in line, despite back-to-back headkick knockouts over Michael Bisping and Luke Rockhold.
“He’s gonna have to get over it. He’s out of his mind if he thinks he should’ve got a fight in there before those two,” White told Helwani.
“Anderson Silva has never lost in the UFC, ever. That was his first loss. And the way he lost, the way that it all went down, this is the fight to make, not the Vitor Belfort fight.”
After White revealed that negotiations are underway for Belfort to fight Kennedy in Brazil, he went off on a tangent that the UFC was protecting Belfort, a testosterone replacement therapy user, by continually having him fight in his home country.
“Listen to me: the last f***ing thing on earth we would do is lie about something like this,” White said.
“Everybody always thinks there’s these massive conspiracies and s*** … you think we’re gonna hide Vitor Belfort in Brazil, so that he could cheat? … I would never f***ing do that.”
Kennedy, who has won eight of his past 10 bouts and hasn’t lost a non-title match up since December 2007, has been outspoken against fighters using TRT, calling it legal cheating.
Nevertheless, it looks like Kennedy is at least considering squaring off with Belfort, as a victory would immediately put him on the short list of 185-pound title contenders.