Long before Conor McGregor stepped through the ropes of the boxing ring to battle Floyd Mayweather, Anderson Silva strived to do the same to fight Roy Jones Jr. Regrettably, the fight never came to fruition.

Today, however, Jones Jr. would still love to welcome Silva to the boxing ring. The boxing legend attempted to reignite discussions for this fight on The Ask Gary Vee Show.

“I’m still trying to fight Anderson Silva right now,” Jones Jr. said (h/t MMAFighting.com). “Me and Anderson Silva have been trying to fight way before Floyd Mayweather and McGregor ever thought about this. We’ve been trying to fight for nine years now and they would not let him get free to fight me. . . Me and him could have did this a long time ago and we were at the pinnacle of our careers when we first started talking about it so why they still won’t let us fight right now, I don’t know.”

“He still wants to fight me and I still want to fight him,” he continued. “He has 14 professional boxing matches so the different thing about it is, he has boxing experience. So it’s conceivable that he could do it.

“Both of us want to fight right now still and the UFC won’t let him free to fight. I’m 48, going on 49 in January, and because of how big it is, and how big of an event it is, and I know what it means to him, I’m still willing to fight Anderson Silva tomorrow if he was free to do it.”

Apparently, Silva is also into this fight. The former UFC middleweight champ accepted the boxer’s challenge on Instagram.

ok Roy Jr this is everything I’ve wanted for years, long before all this happened, it will be a pleasure to step into the ring with you. I have great respect and admiration for everything you’ve done in boxing and everyone knows that this has always been my great dream. Let’s make this event happen. I think we have this right, in fact this is something that both You and I are willing to do. So. Let’s make it happen, Mr. Roy.

A post shared by Anderson “The Spider” Silva (@spiderandersonsilva) on Dec 2, 2017 at 1:49pm PST

Are you interested in a boxing match between Anderson Silva and Roy Jones Jr.? Do you think it will happen?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/12/2017.