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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
When the report came out last week from Brazilian media that Anderson Silva had suffered a rib injury, UFC 162 title challenger Chris Weidman was immediately concerned. This is a fight he'd been campaigning for since last summer, and if Silva was indeed injured and out of their bout, it once again took the rug out from under him.
"I was like, 'Don't tell me this, don't tell me this,'" Weidman said of his reaction to the news in an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. "I'm freaking out. I'm like, 'I need to go home and take a nap. I need to go exit the world for a little bit. Honestly, I needed to go home and take a nap because I was going to start freaking out. It was just too much. Overload. I was freaking out. And then we ended up finding out it wasn't true, knock on wood."
Of course, the Brazilian reporter who initially broke the news of the injury has stuck by his story, despite the denials from Silva's camp and the UFC. Regardless, the fight is still on, and Weidman's hoping that remains the case.
"There's something that scares me with that, yeah," Weidman said. "The thing is, it’s been a long road. After I fought Munoz, I called him out. We were supposed to fight and it ended up not happening a couple times. So I still have that mind set. But I'm training for the fight. I believe it's going to happen."
"But there's something inside me that's a little bit like, 'I just really want this fight to happen.' I just want to be in that cage with him. I just want to get to July 6. I want to get to the weigh-ins. I want to look at him. I want to see him physically there and I'll be a happy man."
Penick's Analysis: Weidman doesn't want to be Charlie Brown running up to kick the football here, so he's trying to remain cautiously optimistic despite the injury report. It seems like even if there is an issue, Silva's camp is moving forward with the fight, so he should take solace in that and hope nothing further sets Silva back. But he remains in the mindset of "I'll believe it when I see it" in regards to Silva showing up against him, and it's hard to blame him right now. But all he can do is prepare as best as he can, and be ready for the fight to actually take place on July 6.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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