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Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight Champion Tim Sylvia is on a mission.
Aside from beating Tony Johnson later this month at ONE FC 9, which takes place at the Mall of Asia Arena in the Philippines, "The Maine-iac" wants to put on the kind of performance that would convince his old employer he deserves a second chance inside the Octagon.
A place he would exact revenge against Frank Mir (for this), or simply bang it out with Pat Barry, according to his conversation with Knockout Radio (via MMA Weekly):
"Frank Mir, first and foremost. You know, unfinished business man. He broke my arm and I wanted to keep fighting and they wouldn't let me, so I'm irritated. I'd like to fight a striker so that we could put on a good show. I have a good friend, Pat Barry, who is in the UFC. I think if him and I fought it would be Fight of the Night or Knockout of the Night. Someone would go to sleep and it would be Fight of the Night. We might be able to score both of them. One of us gets Knockout of the Night and Fight of the Night. We'd put on a good show. We've had some good sparring sessions so it would be a good fight for the fans. I know he brings it and so do I, so something bad is going to happen to one of us."
After an embarrassing knockout loss to geriatric pugilist Ray Mercer back in 2009, Sylvia rebounded to win seven of his next eight fights with six finishes, prompting him to declare he could defeat 80-percent of the current crop of UFC heavyweights.
We'll have to assume his last two performances against Andrei Arlovski at ONE FC 5 and Satoshi Ishii at Bom-Ba-Ye don't count, since neither "The Pitbull" nor Ishii are employed by ZUFFA.
UFC President Dana White insists that Sylvia is not only past his prime, but wasn't very good to begin with, having been champion when the promotion's 265-pound division was at its weakest. "The Maine-iac" contends it wasn't his fault UFC had a shitty roster.
Now the roster is the best it has ever been ... but does it have any room for big Tim?
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