Dana White says Anderson Silva stopped speaking to him after UFC release conversation

Anderson Silva has not spoken to Dana White since the UFC CEO told him his time with the promotion was over, White revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone. The conversation followed Silva’s knockout loss to Uriah Hall in 2020 — the seventh defeat in his final nine UFC outings — and it permanently fractured the pair’s relationship.

“Anderson Silva, he was always a unique individual to deal with, but he lost like 8 or 9 or 10 in a row, something like that,” White said. “That guy won’t talk to me to this day. Because I said it’s over and he was in his 40s.”

White acknowledged the core of Silva’s grievance. “His thing was ‘who are you to tell me that I’m done doing what I love to do?’” White recalled telling him it was over inside the UFC, while conceding that Silva was free to compete elsewhere — which he did. Since leaving the promotion, Silva has pursued a boxing career, defeating Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Tyron Woodley, with his only loss in that code coming on a decision to Jake Paul.

Now 51 and reportedly training to become a police officer, Silva has acknowledged that only a handful of fights likely remain in his career. The rift with White, however, appears unresolved.

White said the Silva situation is not unique, describing a pattern of difficult end-of-career conversations with fighters who struggle to accept that their time at the top level has passed. “Even guys that were really good but it’s at the end — I’m like it’s time for them to hang it up. They get mad and they get upset. Some of these guys never talk to me again,” he said.

The UFC CEO attributed the reluctance to retire to a combination of financial incentive and the emotional pull of competing in front of large crowds. “First of all the money. One more paycheck. Let me get one more paycheck. Then it’s imagine being at that level and walking out of the tunnel at [Madison Square Garden] with 22,000 people going crazy,” White said. “You don’t know it’s over until you actually get in there and you can’t pull the trigger the way you used to and you get beat.”

White pointed to Jon Jones and Georges St-Pierre as rare examples of elite fighters who managed to exit the sport largely on their own terms, contrasting them with the majority who leave only after a string of defeats makes the decision unavoidable.