Matt Lindland and UFC President Dana White Meet ,Discuss Return

The first, albeit tiny, steps toward middleweight Matt Lindland’s return to the UFC were taken last week when Lindland spoke to UFC president Dana White.

Lindland hasn’t fought in the UFC since UFC 54 on Aug. 20, 2005. He wore a shirt bearing the logo of a sponsor not approved by UFC management and hasn’t been back.

Lindland worked the corner of Chael Sonnen in Sonnen’s unsuccessful WEC middleweight title bid against Paulo Filho last week in Las Vegas. After the bout, Lindland said he’d spoken to White about returning to fight in the UFC.

White said he is “not sure” of whether Lindland will return. In a text message, he wrote, “He told me he wants to come back, and I haven’t thought about it at all.“

Now would be a good time to start. Lindland is one of the world’s five best middleweights, along with UFC champion Anderson Silva, Filho, Pride ex-champion Dan Henderson and UFC ex-champ Rich Franklin.

The middleweight division is clearly the UFC’s weakest and could use a quality challenger like Lindland.

Whatever his grievances are with Lindland, White owes it to the UFC’s fans to settle the dispute and bring “The Law” back to the UFC to fortify a lackluster division.