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Anderson Silva may be open to moving up two weight classes to take on the big boys in the heavyweight division, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. In fact, according to Dana White, we’ll see him box Roy Jones Jr. before we see him take on someone like Frank Mir.

Here’s a great look at where Anderson Silva’s boxing skills are at. Good enough to compete with Roy Jones Jr.?

It’s too bad other boxers (*cough*Floyd Mayweather*cough*) don’t have the same attitude towards MMA as Roy Jones Jr. has.

You know, I’d like to see how Anderson would fare against RJJ in a boxing match. I don’t want to see Anderson permanently retire from MMA to do it, but I would like to see the fight.

Continuing last week’s trend of wild news comes this interview with Anderson Silva where he claims he’s already signed a few contracts to fight Roy Jones Jr. presumably as soon as his current UFC deal is up. Translated via Fighters Only.

Photo courtesy of Sherdog.com

When one door closes, another one usually opens. But this time, probably not.

Earlier today, news broke that Roy Jones Jr. had agreed to face Anderson Silva in a MMA match in the UFC, which Dana White subsequently shot down.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t another MMA match-up out there for Jones. The Cesar Gracie camp is trying yet again to get Nick Diaz a fight with Jones, and this time they claim they have Strikeforce backing them up.

After reports surfaced that Dana White had nixed the idea of a fight between Roy Jones Jr and Anderson Silva occuring in the UFC, Strikeforce founder, Scott Coker, agreed to make the fight happen in Strikeforce. Nick Diaz would be fighting Roy Jones Jr.under MMA rules.

“We would absolutely set this fight up. Of course we would have to run it by Showtime for final approval, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t have this fight” -Scott Coker

It now seems that the only hope of seeing one of the legends of boxing stepping into a cage will be through Strikeforce.

The only problem, besides the obvious one of whether Jones would even be interested (his camp has yet to say a word about it), is Strikeforce and Showtime aren’t quite as interested as Gracie’s website leads us to believe.

MMA Junkie followed up with Showtime exec Ken Hershman and Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker, and neither seem too receptive to the idea, despite what Coker was quoted as saying on GracieFighter.com.

“I get a Roy Jones call once a week pitching me things,” Hershman said on today’s Strikeforce media call. “[A fight between Diaz and Jones Jr.] would be a very long shot of ever happening…We’re looking to build the best mixed martial arts brand. I believe we have the best professional boxing brand on television, and I think our fights month in and month out prove that. I don’t see the need to combine the two at the moment.”

“I’ve had several calls from different people saying, ‘Roy Jones vs. Nick Diaz, Roy Jones vs. Cung Le, Roy Jones vs. this guy or that guy, but it’s something that we haven’t really talked about,” Coker said. “I really don’t even know how serious it is. But the question is, ‘Does he want to fight in MMA? Does he want to fight in just boxing?’ These are all things that haven’t been fleshed out.

“I did get a call from Nick’s manager asking me if I’d be interested in looking at a fight between Roy Jones and Nick. I said, ‘Are you talking about boxing? Are you talking about MMA?’ He says, ‘In MMA.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s something we can definitely have a conversation about. That just happened this morning. That’s the extent of it.”

While a Diaz-Jones Jr. fight might be intriguing inside and outside the cage in that guilty pleasure kind of way, it definitely doesn’t sound like this one is going to happen either. Looks like Jones only option at this point is to wait for Anderson Silva, or promote his own MMA match, something I imagine he’s not too interested in unless a tall lanky Brazilian with serious skills is staring across the ring from him.

Roy Jones Jr. is apparently tired of waiting around for Anderson Silva to fulfill his UFC contract.

According to this CBS Sports report, Jones Jr. is now willing to enter the Octagon and fight Anderson under MMA rules. Both parties have already verbally agreed to the fight.

So Jones’ manager, McGee Wright, approached Jones a few weeks ago, and asked him if he’d consider fighting Silva on his turf, in an Octagon.

Jones agreed, McGee told CBSSports.com. So a pumped-up McGee reached out to Silva’s manager, Soares, and Soares was excited as well.

“He said Silva would do it, fight Roy in an MMA fight,” Wright said.

Great news for Anderson, right? Is it possible this is the middleweight match-up Dana said he was working on that “would blow people’s minds” (btw, the last time we heard that phrase, we got action figures and Lorenzo Fertitta working for the company he already owns)? Yeah, no, not by a long shot. Dana already shot it down.

“You won’t see a Silva versus Jones fight while Silva is under contract with me,” White said Tuesday. “I don’t want to say anything bad about Roy Jones, I like Roy Jones and was a fan of his, but he mattered like fifteen years ago. He’s not anywhere near the best boxer in the world. He must’ve spent all his money.”

So much for that idea. I don’t really blame Dana for for putting the brakes on it though. Even with a gentleman’s agreement to stay standing, a Jones-Silva MMA fight just doesn’t seem all that appealing to me. At least in boxing match, there’s a little bit of uncertainty of how the fight will go down.

In a MMA fight, the only thing I see going down is Roy Jones Jr.

One of Sherdog’s people down in Brazil got the opportunity to interview Anderson Silva during his training for Thales Leites. The interview starts off fairly slow with Anderson talking about who he’s training with and how’s it going.

Then, he’s asked about a potential fight with GSP later this year, and his reply is pretty similar to how I’d answer if you asked me to go get a beer. Basically, a nonchalant, “Sure, why the hell the not?”

At that point though, the interviewer tries to crank it up a notch, and asks him about a hypothetical fight with Fedor Emelianenko. Anderson doesn’t seem to be too crazy about it with the whole weight difference and all. You get the impression he wouldn’t say no if asked, but it’s not something he’s going to start lobbying for.

Who he quickly changes the subject to is a different story though. None other than Roy Jones Jr., and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say Silva gets a twinkle in his eye when he starts to talk about boxing Jones Jr. So yeah, we all might want to savor the performances he gives us in the five fights left on his contract, because I’m really starting to think he isn’t kidding about hanging up the 4oz. gloves for the 10oz. variety.

Props to MMA Fanhouse for the find

Image courtesy of CombatLifestyle.com

After the UFC put their foot down we kinda figured Anderson Silva had just accepted that his dream of boxing Roy Jones Jr. wasn’t going to happen and moved on.

Yeah, not so much.

After my contract with the UFC ends and end my career in MMA, I intend to have a boxing match with Roy Jones. That’s something that’s already been arranged, it’s all practically a done deal. Now I just have to wait and see.

So far, Anderson’s been playing by the UFC’s rules, but you kind of get the feeling that won’t last forever.

All the talk of Silva’s retirement has been circulating for quite awhile. Who knows if it’ll actually happen when his UFC contract runs out, and there’s also that pesky champion’s clause to potentially complicate matters should Silva still be the middleweight king, but even as someone who, admittedly, isn’t a boxing fan, I am a little curious to see how Anderson would fare against an out of his prime Jones Jr. in a boxing match.

Although, if it were up to me, I hope he stays put and continues to entertain us for years to come. Time will tell.

If you haven’t already heard, Jason Guida is stepping in for Ken Shamrock this weekend to take on Bobby Lashley on Roy Jones Jr.’s “March Badness” card. And so far, he’s done a pretty good job filling in for Ken by adding some heat to the fight. In the video above, Guida can be seen talking a little trash to Bobby which results in Lashley grabbing Guida by the throat at the end before Jones Jr. steps in to break it up. Something tells me Lashley is the wrong guy to piss off.