Liddell-Silva slips through UFC's grasp

You need a scorecard to tally the reasons why the Chuck Liddell-Wanderlei Silva fight has yet to be made.

After UFC 76, is it fair to add UFC matchmaking to the list?

After blasting Pride for botching a recent opportunity to match "The Iceman" against "The Axe Murderer" by having Silva fight - and lose to - Dan Henderson in February, UFC President Dana White took his own chance by lining up Liddell to face Keith Jardine last Saturday at UFC 76.

That didn't work either.

Granted, the Liddell-Jardine fight was booked before the UFC signed Silva. However, White had to have a sense of the timing of a deal before nailing down the UFC 76 fight. After all, White always says "we'll have them all" when referring to getting the former Pride fighters into the UFC. With the Liddell-Silva fight derailed so many times, putting Liddell in with Jardine was a risky roll of the dice.

This would taken some work, but once Silva was signed, White could have scrapped the Jardine-Liddell match, elevated the Forrest Griffin-Mauricio Rua bout to the main event and put together another fight to fill the void on the card. Yeah, hindsight is always 20/20, but is the scenario that implausible?

MMA fans are now left with the very real possibility that they might never see what had the makings of the biggest showdown in the short history of the sport. Sure, the fight could still be made in December, but first thing's first, Liddell has to decide if he's going to continue to throw punches.

Loretta Hunt at the Fight Network is reporting that Liddell is coming back. Interestingly enough, Liddell's camp is looking at "Shogun," not Silva, as the next opponent. That contradicts what Liddell said himself Saturday night, when he stated he still wants to fight Silva "if it makes sense" to the UFC. Hell yeah, it makes sense and an interim fight with Rua potentially increases the likelihood that we will never see it.

White never hesitates to level criticism. He takes repeated shots at boxing, boxing promoters, MMA fan sites, media and the former owners of Pride, just to name a few. This time, a case can be made that he doesn't have to look far to deliver criticism about why we still don't have the fight fans everywhere want to see.

Posted by Steve Sievert