The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 4 has certainly been an odd season of the long-running reality series, and the Finale is not looking to buck that trend.
According to a report from Adriano Albuquerque and Raphael Marinho at Combate (which was confirmed by MMAFighting.com’s Guilherme Cruz), the event will take place in Miami, Florida, and will be headlined by a middleweight bout between Lyoto Machida and Yoel Romero.
The event was initially slated to take place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, but has been moved for unknown reasons. The card’s original headline bout, a welterweight tilt between Rick Story and Erick Silva, has been downgraded to the co-main event. Romero vs. Machida is a critical middleweight bout between two top-tier talents heading in different directions.
The Dragon is set to make one of the fastest turnarounds of his UFC career. Fresh off a two-round thrashing at the hands of Luke Rockhold in April, the former light heavyweight champ desperately needs a win in order to reassert himself as a top 185-pound talent.
Romero, an Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling, is no easy out. Since joining the UFC, Romero is a perfect 5-0 (9-1 in his career), with his most recent win being his controversial third-round knockout of Tim Kennedy. Romero has struggled to return to the cage, twice having bouts with Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza fall apart (once due to Souza coming down with pneumonia, the other due to Romero suffering a knee injury). Still, with his heavy hands and powerful wrestling, he can’t be counted out of any fight.
In addition to Machida vs. Romero and Story vs. Silva, the card will also feature the season’s lightweight and bantamweight finals, a light heavyweight bout between Nikita Krylov and Marcos Rogerio de Lima, and a welterweight fight between Lorenz Larkin and Santiago Ponzinibbio.
So who takes this one, MMA fans? Will Machida return to form or will Romero climb his way into the title picture?
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