Heavyweights scheduled for May 26 fight in Las Vegas
Heavyweights, indeed. A bout between two famously big men has been added to
the UFC's Memorial Day weekend card in Las Vegas.
Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva and
Roy "Big Country" Nelson have
agreed to fight on the May 26 card in Nelson's home city. UFC officials
announced the fight booking on Wednesday.
UFC 146 will take place at the MGM
Grand Garden Arena and features a main event heavyweight title fight between
champion
Junior dos Santos
and top contender
Alistair
Overeem, the former Strikeforce heavyweight champ.
Silva (16-3) will be making his UFC debut after a five-fight run in
Strikeforce, where he went 3-2. Most notably, Silva stopped the legendary
Fedor Emelianenko last
February in the opening round of Strikeforce's heavyweight grand prix
tournament, earning a doctor's stoppage after two rounds in one of the year's
biggest upsets. That win was the third straight for "Bigfoot" in the promotion
after wins over former UFC heavyweight champ Andrei Arlovski and a Mike
Kyle.
But in the semifinals of the heavyweight tournament in September, Silva faced
alternate
Daniel Cormier, who
was stepping in for Overeem. In the first round, Cormier dropped Silva, who had
a big height and reach advantage, and finished him with strikes on the ground.
In January, Silva announced that he had signed a contract with the UFC, which
had slowly been bringing over Strikeforce's heavyweight fighters in anticipation
of dissolving the weight class in that promotion.
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Nelson (16-7, 3-3 UFC) has had a rough go of it since starting his UFC career
2-0, including a knockout win over
Brendan Schaub to win Season 10
of "The Ultimate Fighter." After a second straight Knockout of the Night bonus
for a 39-second stoppage of
Stefan
Struve in March 2010, Nelson has lost three of his last four fights and has
faced a steady stream of criticism from UFC president
Dana White over his weight. It's
criticism that Nelson perhaps took to heart earlier this month, when he
announced that if he got to 100,000 "likes" on his Facebook fan page, he would
make the drop to 205 pounds. Nelson was 246 for his last fight. But he
apparently will get a reprieve from making that drop for now thanks to the Silva
fight booking.
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At
UFC 143 in February, Nelson
lost a Fight of the Night unanimous decision to
Fabricio Werdum that left him
battered and bloodied – but unable to be finished. That erased the knockout win
he had over
Mirko "Cro Cop"
Filipovic at UFC 137 last October that had him back in the win column after
back-to-back losses to dos Santos and
Frank Mir.
Along with the main event heavyweight title fight, UFC 146 features a
heavyweight top contenders bout between former champs Mir and Cain Velasquez, a
middleweight bout between Jason "Mayhem" Miller and C.B. Dollaway; a
welterweight bout between Dan Hardy and Duane Ludwig; lightweight fights between
Paul Sass and Jacob Volkmann and Edson Barboza and Evan Dunham; and a
heavyweight bout between Gabriel Gonzaga and Shane del Rosario.
A few other fighters including Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza also fell under
indefinite suspensions following the event. Souza told
MMAWeekly.com on Saturday that he believed his hand was broken, and he’ll
have to get doctor’s clearance before heading back to the cage later this
year.
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