The Depressing Schedule of Tim “The Maine-iac” Sylvia
By Josh Stein on Mar 01, 2010
For those who haven’t been following the recent freakshow fights discussed by the generally respectable Monte Cox as potential bouts for former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia (25-6 MMA, 9-4 UFC), there’s been more movement recently. While Sylvia’s bout with UFC washout Wes Sims (22-13-1-2 MMA, 0-3 UFC) has been moved to Canada from Ohio, there has been some discussion of Sylvia appearing on the Dream 13 card at the end of March. The word seems to be that Sylvia refused a fight with fellow recovering steroid abuser and former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett (24-5 MMA, 4-1 UFC).
It’s not surprising that Sylvia would avoid a fight with Barnett. He hasn’t beaten a top tier heavyweight in a long time and even with Barnett’s recent bust for illegal substances, he’s still a huge step up in competition compared to what Tim’s looking for right now.
That puts Sylvia in a position to end up fighting three times over the course of the next three months: an unknown opponent in Dream, Sims in Canada, and strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski (1-0 MMA) in what would be the five-time World’s Strongest Man winner’s U.S. debut, and a superheavyweight match. Pudzianowski weighs about 320 pounds and, frankly, is a complete freak of nature and unknown commodity in the world of MMA. While his technique looked spotty in his MMA debut, his power is pretty impressive. Unless Tim really kills Sims and whoever he ends up fighting in Japan, I may end up picking the Polish powerhouse over the former UFC heavyweight champion.
Filed Under: MMA
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I’m assuming Tim Sylvia and Monte Cox are good friends which complicates this but Tim should get rid of him. It appears Monte led him down a bad road and now has no good plan to turn it around for him.
Also I believe Mariusz Pudzianowski is trying to get down to the HW limit of 265. If I remember correctly at the weigh-in for his first fight at KSW 12 he weighed in around 275-280.
Tim is done and someone ought to tell him. He is not athletic enough to compete with these guys anymore and its too bad. As much as I dislike the guy you kind of hate to see a guy who was at the top of the food chain sink so low. I think if he fights Pudzianowski, Mariusz will destroy him just based on his power alone. But that could get the Polish strongman into a company like Strikeforce who may do a super heavyweight if he cannot make it to heavyweight.
Bill
Polish promotion KSW and Pudzainowski’s own management have denied even the possibility of the Sylvia fight. Pudzianowski has been announced for a May 7th event in Poland (though the announced opponent has been changed to TBA), so it’s unlikely that he’ll be undertaking a major fight in the US two weeks before that date.