Dana White admitted last November that he was working on setting up Anderson Silva vs Vitor Belfort 2. There were rumours that the fight was on and that it would be in early 2016 in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Silva defeated Belfort back in 2011 at UFC 126, by a highlight reel front kick in the first round. Belfort recently defeated Dan Henderson by knockout and wanted to fight ASAP.

And it sounded like we were going to see a rematch of that fight at UFC 197, but it wasn’t meant to be..

UFC senior vice president Giovani Decker told Combate that UFC 197, and that the organisation was planning a mega card in a soccer stadium with the rematch of Fabricio Werdum vs. Cain Velasquez as the main event, and a Silva vs. Belfort or possibly Bisping in the co-main.

Werdum vs. Velasquez was instead moved to UFC 196, and the UFC tried to book Silva vs Belfort for a smaller venue:

“With the card losing a title fight as big as that one, we thought this card would fit better at the Arena, no longer at a soccer stadium. But we couldn’t get the deal done with Vitor Belfort. Anderson accepted the fight, but Vitor decided to wait to see what would happen in the fight between Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold (at UFC 194), and he was right, because Rockhold won and called him out at the UFC 194 post-fight press conference, which was a good sign for him.”

“Many people said Vitor didn’t want this fight, and that wasn’t the truth. He wants it, he made it clear it will happen at some time, but for him, thinking about his career and what he has ahead of him at this moment, this fight wouldn’t make sense. We were running out of time, and the UFC needed to announce the UFC 196 main event in Las Vegas. That’s why the fight between Werdum and Velasquez ended up there.”