Hector Lombard
Bellator’s reigning middleweight champ Hector Lombard (31-2-1, 1NC) was to have faced Brian Stann in the main event of UFC on FOX 4, but Stann was forced to withdraw due to injury.
Tim ‘The Barbarian’ Boetsch (15-4) was to have faced Michael Bisping at UFC 149 but ‘The Count’ too has fallen to the injury bug.
So instead of finding two other middleweight fighters the Ultimate Fighting Championship simply paired the two fighters against one another, announcing the match late Wednesday night at UFC.com.
British middleweight Michael Bisping has been injured and is out of his UFC 149 bout against rising force Tim Boetsch. Stepping in to meet “The Barbarian” will be Hector Lombard, a former Cuban Olympian who rides a 25-fight unbeaten streak into his Octagon debut.
Lombard had been slated to fight Brian Stann in the main event of UFC on FOX 4 in August, but was left opponentless earlier today after Stann was forced to withdraw due to injury. That event got a new headliner in the form of Shogun Rua, who’d been left orphaned on the UFC 149 fight card after planned opponent Thiago Silva was hurt.
UFC 149 is expected to take place on July 21, 2012 at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Lombard holds an amazing twenty-five fight undefeated streak with twenty-one straight wins dating back to November 2007. He and Bellator could not come to contract terms after Lombard’s last victory in November at Bellator 58 after stopping Trevor Prangley in a 195-lbs catchweight non-title bout. Lombard successfully defended the Bellator title only once.
Boetsch had a huge come-from-behind win in his last match, stopping Yushin Okami in Japan last February at UFC 144. After being badly beaten for the first two rounds, Boetsch went for broke in the opening moments of the third landing a head kick which swung the momentum his way, allowing ‘The Barbarian’ to finish at 54-seconds of the round via TKO. It was Boetsch’s third straight win and puts him at 7-1 in his last eight bouts.