Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva is currently booked to fight top ranked middleweight Kelvin Gastelum in a highly anticipated middleweight showdown on June 3rd at UFC 212.

While the scrap will certainly be a very interesting one, one aspect that fight fans haven’t been anticipating is the fact that Kings MMA coach Rafael Cordeiro, who trains Kelvin Gastelum, used to train Anderson Silva at the Chute Boxe Academy in the early 2000’s.

He spoke to AG Fight to discuss the situation going into UFC 212:

“I got some history with Anderson Silva back from 2001 and 2002 when I trained him at Chute Boxe,” Cordeiro told AG Fight. “Now, everything has changed. Friendship apart, that’s a competition and we’re all here to win. We all hope to win and I hope Kelvin Gastelum walks out victorious.”

“Anderson has been at Kings MMA a few times, I have a good relationship with him, we talk over the phone and there’s no beef between us. A fight is a fight, that only shows how professional we are. Anderson has been in the opposing corner when Werdum faced Big Nog and that didn’t affect us.

“In the end, however, when Werdum tried to hug him, there was no hug, but that’s behind us. I was Anderson’s coach in the past, when I was his coach. I’m not anymore and I don’t feel disrespectful at all about it”.

For Silva, he will be looking to build on his UFC 208 win over Derrick Brunson, which snapped a 2-fight skid for ‘The Spider’ which saw him drop back to back decision losses to Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier. Gastelum on the other hand will be looking to build on his 3-fight win streak which has seen him go 2-0 at middleeight, knocking out Vitor Belfort and Tim Kennedy.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/16/2017.