Anderson Silva’s legendary 16-fight winning streak and record-setting middleweight dominance helped Dana White build the UFC into a global sports empire. Their partnership defined an era, but Silva’s departure from the UFC in Nov. 2020 following a late-career losing streak severely fractured their bond.
Despite his losses, the UFC treated Silva better than anyone else by keeping his high payouts steady. Still, the two no longer speak because White thinks Silva holds a grudge after the UFC boss pushed the aging fighter to retire.
Dana White Says Anderson Silva Still Won’t Speak to Him Over Retirement
White, who recently slammed Fox Sports, explained the exact moment their relationship fell apart while speaking on The Pivot podcast. The tension traces back to the end of Silva’s UFC run, when he lost seven of his final eight fights, including consecutive losses to Israel Adesanya, Jared Cannonier, and Uriah Hall.
White didn’t sugarcoat things when describing how Silva’s exit from the UFC still weighs on their relationship, saying, “I don’t know if there’s anybody we treated better than Anderson Silva. I respected him so much for his talent and everything else and the guy is to his core, a fighter and a martial artist.”
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White then referred to Silva’s losing skid as the reason he told Silva it was time to walk away, adding, “He went on a losing streak, seven of his last eight or something like that, we never cut his money or ever pulled his money back… and I said ‘time to retire,’ and he won’t talk to me to this day, he hates me.”
White framed the fallout as simply business, noting that while it starts as business, it easily gets personal.
Anderson Silva Fires Back, Calls Out Dana White’s Numbers
The most recent example of how much Silva hates White happened at the end of May. In Portuguese, the 51-year-old repeatedly referred to White as “the bald guy” while dismissing White’s earlier criticisms in Rolling Stone, where the UFC boss suggested that “The Spider” was difficult to deal with from a negotiating perspective.
Since leaving the UFC, he built a second career in boxing by beating Julio Cesar Chávez Jr. and Tito Ortiz, with his only official loss coming against Jake Paul. Most recently, in Dec. 2025, Silva extended his professional boxing record to 4-2-1 by securing a dominant second-round TKO victory over Tyron Woodley. This active post-UFC run even led Most Valuable Promotions to consider booking a trilogy fight between Silva and his historic rival, Chris Weidman, for a May 16 MMA card.
In boxing, he secured massive financial windfalls that surpassed many of his late-career UFC payouts. He took home a guaranteed purse of over $500,000 for the Chavez Jr. bout and secured a $1.5 million guaranteed purse plus a share of the pay-per-view profits for the Jake Paul matchup.
Now at 51, Silva is training with the Beverly Hills Police Department but remains open to another fight.
