Credit: Matt Morgan of MMA Junkie

While UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva has insisted he’s currently ready to fight on a moment’s notice, UFC president Dana White told a different story at today’s UFC 103 pre-fight press conference.

White said Anderson Silva is set to have bone spurs removed from his elbow, and while the procedure is routine, Silva will still need time to recover.

“Contrary to whatever the hell [Silva] is saying, he’s not 200 percent healthy,” White said. “He’s having some bone spurs removed from his elbow, which is a simple little procedure that happens, but you’ve got to have recovery time.”

When Silva is ready to return to action, White said he’s open to fights at both 185 and 205 pounds. But the UFC exec said he’s not ready to see Silva vacate his middleweight title just yet.

“He’s probably two fights away from literally emptying out the middleweight division,” White said. “But that’s great. I think in my opinion, that’s what makes fighters great. When there’s not another guy standing where people go, ‘What about him? He might win.’ When they’re all gone, then the guy moves up to the next weight class and does the same thing. I think that’s what makes guys legendary, fighters that people remember forever.

“I wouldn’t want to see [Silva] vacate the title until everybody’s gone. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say Vitor (Belfort) comes in, and Vitor has to fight Dan Henderson and (Nate) Marquardt, and he goes right in and knocks both of them out in the first round. Anderson vacated the title, and people go, ‘Oh, Vitor would have beat him.’ You annihilate everybody. You don’t leave a guy standing in the division, and then you move.”

White said he still hopes to convince Henderson to sign a new contract and take on Marquardt in an effort to determine the division’s true top contender and create an undeniable challenger to Silva’s 185-pound title.

“I still want to see Henderson and Marquardt fight,” White said. “I like that fight. I think that fight makes sense, and I’d like to see it.

“But you never know. We’ll see what happens. It could end up being Henderson.”

Whether Silva returns to the light heavyweight division following his impending surgery or defends his middleweight belt against one of the division’s top contenders, White clarified that recent rumors of a heavyweight clash with Frank Mir were unfounded.

“Oh, hell no,” White told MMAjunkie.com. “That’s B.J. Penn craziness. He’ll never fight heavyweight here. That’s insane.

“Well, I guess if he annihilated the entire light heavyweight division, which is a tall [expletive] order – you’d have a lot of work to do because that thing is stacked. It would take him three years to do that.”