By Chris Howie
MMANEWS.COM Staff Writer

Earlier this year, Stephan Bonnar had retired from the sports of Mixed Martial Arts and it appeared unlikely that he would not be returning to the Octagon. Things can change.

Bonnar was offered a fight as a fill in against Glover Teixeira at UFC 153 but declined and ultimately ended up with a match up against Anderson Silva instead. He explained how it all went down this week:

"My manager hit me up and asked how I feel about fighting Glover Teixeira," Bonnar said. "And I said, 'You know my rule. If I'm going to do this again, he's got to have more Twitter followers than me.' I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true. That's how I feel. That's a measure of someone's popularity, and I just want a bigger name. The last three opponents, I've had more Twitter followers than them, and I've beat them, and I feel like I deserve a bigger name now. I really don't have an interest in fighting an up-and-comer type, guys who are climbing their way up and people don't really know how good they are. I've done that a lot in my career."

In fact, Bonnar's past three opponents – Krzysztof Soszynski, Igor Pokrajac and Kyle Kingsbury – don't have as many Twitter followers combined as Bonnar does. It's an interesting barometer for deciding whether or not to fight someone, but Teixeira didn't make the cut.

"I got another text from (my manager) asking how I'd feel about fighting Anderson, and I laughed," Bonnar said. "Like, 'Yeah. Good luck trying to pull that one off.' Of course I'd fight Anderson – 2.5 million Twitter followers? Geez. Like this will ever happen.' … By Thursday night, it was everywhere, and I couldn't believe it. I played a little phone tag Friday and got ahold of (UFC President Dana White), and lo and behold, it was true.

Props: MMAjunkie.com.

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