According to MMAJunkie.com the fight is all but official with both fighters verbally agreeing to face each other at UFC 97:
Sources close to the bout have indicated to MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com) that Silva and fellow Brazilian Thales Leites (14-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) have verbally agreed to the contest. Bout agreements have yet to be signed.
In his run in the UFC Leites has defeated Pete Sell, Ryan Jensen, Nate Marquardt and Drew McFederies. Leites is not the ideal opponent I'd like Silva to be facing right now, especially since Silva has stated several times that he would like to retire in(what is it now?) four fights. I think he needs to rematch Yushin Okami but unfortunately Okami is fighting a near meaningless fight against Dean Lister. The bout was already signed before Silva weirded everyone out at UFC 90 so there is nothing the UFC could have done to match Okami with Silva.
I'm not trying to take away anything from Leites. He deserves to fight Silva right now but in my opinion, this is not the fight that Silva should be taking right now. Another thing is that Silva will be off until April of 2009, when UFC 97 is projected to take place. Silva has also said time and time again that he would like to fight as often as possible. After not even breaking a sweat in October to fighting in April of the next year? Thats terrible to see. Silva is more than capable and willing to fight in a date closer than April and it doesn't make sese to me why the UFC would want to put Silva on the shelf for so long, especially after the UFC 90 display. Silva has been anxious to redeem himself to the fans after that odd display and I don't think he would prefer to wait until April to redeem himself. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. All rumors indicate that Silva has agreed to fight Leites for the Middleweight title but who knows if he and his management have agreed to fight in April. Maybe Leites and Silva will end up fighting sooner rather than later.
This will definitely be the biggest test of the 27 year old Leites's career. In his last fight at UFC 90 Leites was able to quickly submit Drew McFederies, who has never been known to have any sort of a ground game. Before that Leites fought fomer #1 contender Nate Marquardt. In that fight Leites was able to out point Marquardt to get the split decision victory. However, in that fight Marquardt was docked two points to illegal stikes(and should have been docked another for pile driving Leites). Had he not been docked the points Marquardt would have won a narrow decision(if my math is right) or the fight would have been a draw at worst. Silva was easily able to dispatch of Marquardt in 2007 at UFC 73: Stacked. I hate to play the MMA math game but.... well I'll just leave it at that. No matter what though it will be a much more compelling and competitive match than Silva vs Cote.
As of right now UFC 97 is rumored to take place in Montreal. If it holds up this will be the second UFC event to take place in Montreal.
[UPDATE] by Nick Thomas - It's official:
There is no longer a place for rumors involving the likely match between the kingpin of middleweight division, Anderson Silva, and top ranked Thales Leites of Nova Uniao. Signed early this week, this fight will be the main event of UFC 97, confirmed for April 18 in Canada. In a call to the Brazilian Leites, he told us that he will be challenging the champion.
