Anderson Silva has a replacement opponent in mind for UFC 212

Former UFC middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva was slated to square off with surging division contender Kelvin Gastelum at June’s UFC 212 pay-per-view event in Brazil.

However, news broke yesterday evening that Gastelum had been pulled from the event, this after he was flagged for potentially testing positive for marijuana metabolites stemming from an in-competition drug test conducted by USADA.

The drug test was apparently collected in conjunction with Gastelum’s victory over Vitor Belfort, which came at last month’s UFC Fight Night 106 event in Brazil.

Following yesterday’s unfortunate news, top UFC middleweight contender Yoel Romero offered to step in and fight “The Spider” at the June 3 event.

Romero’s offer hinged on the condition that the proposed fight with Silva be made for a UFC interim title.

While Silva’s camp has yet to respond to Romero’s offer, sources close to the fighter have suggested that the former middleweight champion would be interested in fighting Uriah Hall (per Ariel Helwani).

I'm told Anderson Silva is open to fighting Uriah Hall at UFC 212, according to sources close to him.

— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 7, 2017

Anderson Silva recently re-entered the middleweight contendership picture with a controversial decision defeat of Derek Brunson. The win marked Silva’s first since a 2012 light heavyweight defeat of Stephan Bonnar.

Prior to his victory Brunson, Silva lost decisions to Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping, and a pair of fights to Chris Weidman. Those losses were split by a no-contest with Nick Diaz, which was initially a decision win for Silva, but was eventually overturned when Diaz tested positive for marijuana metabolites and Silva tested positive for several more serious banned substances. The middleweight legend is 34-8 in sum.

Meanwhile, Uriah Hall was most recently seen in action at this past November’s UFC Fight Night event in Belfast, Northern Ireland where he suffered a first-round TKO loss to Gegard Mousasi. The setback served as Hall’s third in a row, as he had previously dropped fights to Derek Brunson and Robert Whittaker.

Prior to his recent three-fight skid, Hall had won five of his past six fights which included TKO victories over Chris Leben, Ron Stallings, Oluwale Bamgbose and the aforementioned Gegard Mousasi.

Would you like to see Hall and Silva throw down at UFC 212 on June 3 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil? Sound off PENN Nation!