By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Marcelo Alonso

The back injury suffered by Thiago Silva took him out of UFC 89, and Lyoto Machida, his opponent in the event, won’t fight too. “There’s no way to find and opponent now, and I’ll have to wait another event to fight. I don’t know who’ll I face, UFC didn’t say anything yet, only that I won’t fight at UFC 89”, said Lyoto, sad with the scrapped fight. “It’s sad because I was focused, training hard and prepared, but this kind of things happens. I changed my training now, I’m doing more Karate and working out, doing less MMA stuff”, told Lyoto, who has no idea of who his next opponent will be.

“It’s a little complicated, because everybody in the division has their fights, so I’ll have to wait a little to see who will I fight with”, said the athlete, that got surprised by Rashad Evans’ knockout against Chuck Liddell at UFC 88. “I was surprised, because I believed that Chuck would win, but everything can happen and that punch was perfect. No he’s in a delicate situation, were going to get a title shot and now needs to do more fights”, said, betting on the light-heavyweight champion, Forrest Griffin, for the fight against Rashad. “I believe that Griffin has a better game to beat Rashad… No demerit for Rashad, he’s a great fighter, but I think that Griffin has a better MMA game to win this fight”, said the athlete, betting that Griffin will start 2009 still as the UFC light-heavyweight champion.